Want white paper on fixed deposits of BMC: Aaditya

htmumbai@hindustantimes.com

Mumbai: Reacting to the civic budget, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Saturday cautioned that the Brihanmumbai Municipal corporation (BMC) is heading towards financial bankruptcy. Demanding a white paper on fixed deposits of the civic body, he alleged that the budget was for contractor friends of Shinde-Fadnavis government prepared on the orders from the chief minister.

“This budget is outcome of orders given to the BMC commissioner from Varsha (chief minister’s official residence) to propose the schemes, allocations for the contractor friends of Shinde-Fadnavis government,” alleged Thackeray. He added that no major announcement of new big projects as is the impact of his letter to Chahal.

“In about ₹50,000 crore budget outlay, there are provisions for cost escalation of existing projects to help contractors. This is not Mumbaikar’s budget, this is a budget for contractor friends of ruling government,” said Aaditya.

“Budget says civic body will raise about ₹6,000 crore by Internal Temporary Transfer. The BMC must explain to the city what this ITT means and from where the money will be transferred? We fear that money from fixed deposits of BMC will be used. So, we demand that administration should come out with white paper on the FDs of the BMC.” said Aaditya. He also demanded that the state government should pay its dues of ₹7,500 crore to BMC.

“BMC budget speech says that there is a need to observe strict control on expenditure since the BMC is losing sources of revenue. Then why it is spending ₹75 crore on skywalks as it has no use and waste of money. Similarly, ₹1,729 crore provision for beautification is unnecessary as it can be done by using CSR funds instead of using taxpayer’s money,” said Aaditya.