Councillors trade barbs over budget
The first day of the corporation’s budget talks was marked by the absence of any healthy discussion. It was dominated mostly by politics and non-civic issues.
The council meeting also witnessed uproar over a ‘personal reference ‘to the deputy mayor, B.Bhadra, by LDF councillor Mumtaz Teacher, during her speech. Following a short verbal tussle between the UDF and the LDF councillors, the mayor ruled it as a ‘personal remark’ and disbursed the meeting for lunch.
Earlier, as soon as the council meeting began, the mayor, Tony Chammany invited UDF councillor R Thyagarajan, chairman of the education standing committee, to speak.
Later, opposition leader K.J Jacob, strongly opposed the budget proposals and said: “The ruling front has failed to present a budget based on actual income and expenditure. There is a difference of `548.52 crore between the estimated amount and actual revenue (revised budget) of ` 316.08 crore for 2011-12,” he said.
Several opposition councillors said the budget had been prepared without consulting the standing committee and council members. One of the seniormost members, Ms. Syamala Prabhu, said that this was for the first time that a budget was prepared without having discussions with councillors. “The budget has only hi-tech proposals and lacks suggestions to address the basic issues of common people,” she said. While many opposition councillors alleged that the budget was silent on the welfare of women.
Terming the revenue estimate in the budget document as ‘baseless and unrealistic’, LDF councillor M.P Mahesh Kumar said that the mayor and the finance committee failed to follow the statutory steps before finalising the budget estimate. “The ruling front failed to implement 90 per cent of the projects announced in the previous budget,” he alleged.
The budget session will continue on Friday.
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