Administrator of Belagavi City Corporation and Deputy Commissioner M.G. Hiremath presented the annual budget of the municipal body in Belagavi on Wednesday. Though the urban local body has elected members, they have not taken charge as the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor are yet to be elected.
Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party leader Rajkumar Topannanavar criticised the State Government’s decision to announce the budget before the elected members could be sworn in. “This is undemocratic and goes against the spirit of decentralisation,’’ he said.
The budget shows a surplus of ₹6.1 lakh. Apart from regular revenue streams, the corporation will venture into new avenues such as revising rents for its commercial property and selling sites at important places in the city.
“We will take up e-auction of 37 sites at Malmaruti area in the city. We hope to gain around ₹20 crore to ₹25 crore from sales. We will also revise the rent of commercial complexes,” he said.
The corporation will set up an SMS-based revenue monitoring system that will alert property owners about property tax and water cess due dates.
The following are the salient features of the budget:
The expected annual revenue is ₹447.65 crore and the estimated expenditure is ₹447.58 crore.
The corporation has set aside ₹2 crore for infrastructure such as drinking water, toilets and street lights in the Udyambag Industrial Area. Another ₹2 crore will be set aside for distributing dustbins to households to store wet and dry waste. Pink toilets for women will come up at a cost of ₹1 crore.
A special fund of ₹50 lakh will be spent on women empowerment. Street light maintenance will cost ₹5.5 crore.
Another ₹5.5 crore will be set aside for maintenance of roads, gutters, footpaths, storm-water drains and to put up name boards in various places in the city, while Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes welfare schemes will get ₹5.09 crore.
A sum of ₹1.69 crore will be spent on welfare of Other Backward Classes and ₹1.16 crore for the welfare of the physically challenged. As many as six vending zones for roadside vendors and restrooms for street vending women will be built under the DAY-NULM scheme of the Union Government at a cost of ₹5 crore.
A senior citizen’s park and a children’s park will come up at a cost of ₹1 crore and a centre for destitute women will be built at a cost of ₹50 lakh. A sum of ₹1 crore will be spent to install statues of important personalities, ₹60 lakh to control the number of street dogs and ₹50 lakh will be marked for developing infrastructure in the Deputy Commissioner’s office.
A sum of ₹30 lakh will be spent for journalist welfare, ₹50 lakh for environment-friendly funerals using cattle dung cakes, ₹50 lakh for control of infectious diseases and ₹13 lakh will go for sports promotion.
A sum of ₹50 lakh will be spent for maintenance of swimming pools, badminton hall and hi-tech gym, ₹20 lakh to provide computer systems and other facilities in the regional offices of the city corporation to provide various services to the public, ₹10 lakh will be kept aside for conducting plastic-free drives and ₹5 crore will be reserved for infrastructure facilities during emergency situations.
