Without any fanfare or announcement, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) uploaded the 2022-23 Budget on its website close to midnight on March 31. The Budget was initially scheduled to be presented the previous day, but was called off at the last minute. What followed was extensive discussions with not just Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who also holds the Finance and Bengaluru Development portfolios, but also Ministers R. Ashok and C.N. Ashwath Narayan as well as the city’s BJP MLAs.
According to sources, the civic officials had prepared a Budget with an outlay of around ₹9,000 crore. This was in line with the BBMP (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) Act, 2021. However, BJP MLAs took objection to the Budget and budgetary allocations, demanding higher allocations be made for development works. This, considering that polls to both the BBMP council and the Assembly are due.
Added to the mix was the one-upmanship between the two factions of city MLAs – one led by Mr. Ashok and the other by Mr. Narayan, who were both reportedly trying to get more funds.
After several rounds of discussions, the outlay was increased to ₹10,484.28 crore. Soon after this was finalised, the Budget document was uploaded online after it received a green signal from the Chief Minister’s office, civic officials said.
BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta said that the administrator Rakesh Singh, who is also Additional Chief Secretary of Urban Development Department, wanted the Budget to be put on public domain as soon as it was finalised.
To increase the outlay, the State government has given the BBMP a one-year exemption to the BBMP (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) Act, 2021.
The Opposition Congress has taken strong objection to this as the State government had notified the rules of the BBMP (FRBM) Act only weeks earlier. This government’s move to exempt it from the Act, the sole purpose of which was to bring in accountability and transparency in finance, has been criticised. Congress councillors said this would set a “bad precedent.”
Questioning the exemption, M. Shivaraju, former Ruling Party Leader from Congress, said it was done with an eye on the polls. “The BJP government has failed the city and citizens. The inflated outlay belies the actual fiscal health of the civic body. As such, most of the development works will remain on paper,” he said.
He alleged that civic officials had not consulted any Congress MLAs, former councillors and Mayors nor any civil society organisations. Incidentally, this is the second Budget to be presented by the bureaucrats, since the term of the elected council ended in September 2020.
Many civil society organisations have welcomed the Budget being presented before the fiscal year ended.
