For several years now, BBMP has been quoting a high Budget amount in its announcement – but what it actually spends is much less.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Monday presented its Budget online for the current financial year 2020-21 amidst much fanfare due to the COVId-19 pandemic. While the opposition Congress has claimed that all constituencies with BJP MLAs have been favoured at the expense of constituencies held by opposition MLAs, severe criticism has come up with the BBMP’s financial practices and impractical fund allocation in the Budget. This year BBMP has presented a budget with an outlay of Rs 10,899.23 crore compared to the Rs 11,449 crore outlay announced for the previous year. As part of the Budget speech, L Srinivas, the Chairman of Standing Committee for Finance, announced that the expenditure of the previous fiscal was revised to only Rs 7,066.21 crore. “This is a Rs 10,900 crore budget, somewhat less than last year’s but still it is unrealistic ,” Sapna Karim, Head of Civic Participation of Janaagraha, said. “We are also unfortunately experiencing high variance between the budget estimates and the revised estimates. The primary reason for this is high dependence on government grants and the dearth of efficiency in BBMP’s property tax collection, which is the BBMP’s prime revenue source. The revised estimates are lower than the budget estimates because often, the state government grants are delayed.” Janaagraha is a non-governmental organisation based in Bengaluru advocating civic engagement in urban local governance in India. In a comparative study, they have found, the variance between budget estimates (BE) and revised budget estimates (RE) averaged at 29.6% and budget variance between budget estimates and actuals averaged at 28% in Bengaluru. Meanwhile cities like Mumbai (9%), Chennai (15%), Ahmedabad (8%), Surat (5%) boast of an average budget variance under 15%. Table by Janagraha in crores Variance % Particulars BE RE Actuals BE vs RBE BE vs Actuals 2013-14 8,445 3,209 3,093 62% 63% 2014-15 5,978 2,894 4,205 52% 30% 2015-16 5,394 4,542 5,246 16% 3% 2016-17 9,331 6,819 6,572 27% 30% 2017-18 9,996 7,514 7,321 25% 27% 2018-19 10,129 7,380 7,296 27% 28% 2019-20 11,649 7068 NA 39% NA 2020-21 10899 NA NA NA NA With increased tax collection, the city council can be more independent and not dependent on the state government. This year, too, they have failed to reach their property tax collection target. While it is a good thing to keep a high target and they have said that they will widen the tax net, but collection efficiency has been a cause of worry,” Sapna added Actuals Actuals Actuals Actuals RE BE 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2,235 3,505 4,030 3,613 3,113 4,339 5,246 6,572 7,321 7,296 7,064 10,899 43% 53% 55% 50% 44% 40% Sapna also said that right now it is unclear what the BBMP’s budgeting and accounting rules are and said the commitment to release a BBMP Budget and Accounting Rules 2020 is a welcome step forward. Incidntally previous BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad had asked for the BBMP to be brought under the Karnataka Local Fund authorities and Fiscal Responsibility Act, but until now there has been no progress on that front. As mentioned by Sapna, the budget document proposes a similar law for BBMP to institute financial discipline to the Palike. Speaking about the same, Srikanth Narasimhan, co-founder of the Bengaluru Nava Nirmana Party, which will contest BBMP elections this year, also criticised the Budget calling it “nothing short of shambolic”. He said, “After the year is already over, BBMP is putting up revised estimates, which does not happen anywhere else in the world, but this keeps happening with the BBMP year after year. This is even more ridiculous as the amount of 11,649 crore has not been reduced to 11,000 crores but has become 7,000 crores. A revised budget estimate in the middle of the year might still be understandable but revision happening after the year has been completed is plainly shambolic. Worse still, this happens year after year and has become the norm now.” On the current Budget, he said the amount is again too random and too large to be not curtailed. “The same story is likely to be repeated this year too. We would like to know now if the 198 Corporators and their Ward Committees have given their requirements, and if so, how were they accounted for in the Budget? If this is not done, then this budget is not even worth the paper that it is written on,” he said. He added, “In this situation, it does not make sense to delve into the details when the fundamentals themselves are not in place. Effectively this budget is just a copy paste from previous year’s with some random numbers put in place of other random numbers.” He further stressed that the process of drawing up the Budget for all local bodies have to be bottom up from the wards as that is the only way to deliver grassroots governance. Echoing the opinion that the budgetary allocations being nothing notably different from the previous years, Srinivas Alavilli, co-founder of CItizens for Bengaluru, said money should have not been taken out from ward grants. Instead, he said the BBMP should have been given funds from the CM’s relief funds for COVID-19 relief. On the positive side, Srinivas lauded the BBMP for introducing the free water scheme and said it should be expanded to areas in the city through water tankers where residents do not get piped water. He said, “We were told there will be zonal budgets this year and I was eagerly looking for it. It is very disappointing as they seems to have dropped the idea. Rs 999 crore have been sanctioned for solid waste management but year after year we spend hundreds of crores and yet there are no change to the situation. We really need to think differently and decentralise the problem. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which will be around for some years now, how our city manages garbage becomes extremely critical. Yet we don’t see any new ideas and not even acknowledgement that we need to revamp our model.” “The investment in lakes and storm water drains is always half-hearted. It will take decades to revive lakes and clean up drains if we go at this rate. While there is a lot of emphasis on the BBMP office and cafeteria, there is no mention of upgrading the 198 ward offices, many of which do not even have a proper space to hold ward committee meetings. We request BBMP to make ward offices more people friendly and focal points for all things related to BBMP,” he added. Noting some welfare schemes introduced in this budget for pourakarmikas, Lekha Adavi, a lawyer and member of the BBMP Pourakarmika Sangha, urged the BBMP Council to consider a direct-payment system on par with permanent workers for contract workers. The association demanded the EPF (employees’ provident fund) dues from the contractors and health insurance as part of the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana Package must be disbursed immediately. The association also demanded mechanised pushcarts and continuous supply of safety equipment for all pourakarmikas. Lekha also pointed out that 36 crores allocated for housing for such workers will mean Rs 25,000 per worker, as there are 14,000 workers as per BBMP records. Similarly, for midday meal scheme, Rs 10 crore have been allotted which would mean Rs 900 per worker for a year.
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