The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Standing Committee (SC) allocated Rs 650 crore-fund which it had received from BMC administration earlier this month, as part of the 2021-22 budget.
The civic body allotted Rs 650 crore to the SC, for carrying out development works in the constituencies of corporators. The fund allotted this time is Rs 100 crore less than last year. Out of the total amount, Rs 227 crore is earmarked separately for the corporator's fund as there are 227 elected corporators in the BMC, each of them gets Rs 1 crore.
Meanwhile, the remaining balance amount is usually distributed amongst the parties by the SC chairman as per their strength in the BMC.
This year, out of the balance amount - Rs 423 crore fund, the SC allotted Rs 233 crore to Shiv Sena which has 97 corporators, Rs 90 crore to the Congress with 29 corporators, Rs 21 crore to Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) with eight corporators, Rs 18 crore to the Samajwadi Party (SP) with six corporators and Rs 60 crore have been allotted to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has 83 corporators.
Being the second major party in BMC, group leaders of BJP claimed, this is Sena's vendetta to stall development works in the constituencies of BJP.
"BJP has more than 40 percent of the seats in corporation and by cutting funds Sena doesn't want to develop the wards where BJP corporators are there," Bhalchandra Shirsat - senior BJP corporator and spokesperson of the party in BMC told FPJ.
"Till last year there was a tradition of uniform distribution of funds in the BMC which the Sena has broken this year," Shirsat added.
Ravi Raja, senior Congress corporator and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the BMC stated that the decision to allocate funds lies exclusively with the ruling party.
"This a decision made by the chairman, they are the ruling party and at present, they are the ones who take the call," Raja told FPJ.
Meanwhile, SC chairman Yashwant Jadhav stated, the proportion of funds has been decided by taking all the group leaders into confidence.
"Even though I have the sole authority of sanctioning funds, I spoke with each and every group leader including leaders of BJP, before official allotment," Jadhav told FPJ.
"Last year the SC had allotted total fund worth Rs 173 crore to the BJP and till date, their corporators have not been able to give us the details of expenses, also the BJP shouldn't forget, because of them, the total fund got slashed by Rs 100 crore this year," Jadhav stated.
