After BJP and Congress staged protests against each other over the plight of farmers, Indore mayor Malini Gaud threatened to go on a dharna against the CM Kamal Nath-led government alleging the dearth of funds necessary for the smooth running of Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC).
The mayor, who is also a BJP MLA from Indore-4 assembly constituency, even alleged that the paucity of funds has jeopardised IMC’s plans of maintaining its tag as the cleanest city in India for the fourth time in a row.
Guad who has earned nationwide accolades for transforming the Madhya Pradesh commercial capital into the cleanest city of the country said that the state administration has deducted Rs 1,000 crore from the budget allocated to municipal corporations so the IMC’s routine works are hit badly.
According to the mayor, the state government has reduced the Octroi reimbursement from Rs 48 crore to Rs 31 crore and even the reduced amount hasn’t been disbursed. In such a scenario the corporation is finding it difficult to distribute salaries-pensions to employees and even pay the electricity bill, sources claimed.
The corporation is yet to pay Rs 22 crore electricity bill and an amount of Rs 425 crore payable to contractors has also been on hold for a while, the mayor claimed to add the contractors have threatened to stop work over old dues.
“If the situation doesn’t improve, I will sit on dharna to oppose this,” said Gaud.
Amid the controversy, the municipal corporation has a mammoth task of achieving seven-star ratings on cleanliness that includes 75% waste collection fee, which sums up to around Rs 50 crore for the year. If the amount is less, the city could lose out on its ratings.
According to senior officers of the corporation, the city should offer a waste collection cess of Rs 63 crore annually but the collection has been negligible in the last two years. In the year 2017-18, the corporation could recover only Rs 13 crore while it increased slightly to Rs 17.2 crore in year 2018-19. This year, the corporation has only collected Rs 15 crore, opposed to the expected Rs 50 crore, which means the corporation requires to collect Rs 35 crore by the end of the financial year.
The corporation also requires to collect around Rs 100 crore of taxes including old dues and is pondering over tough measures to recover dues from taxpayers, including attaching properties of those who are yet to pay their dues.
Out of the total 17 municipal corporations in Madhya Pradesh, seven are led by BJP leaders and all these corporations have been alleging step-motherly treatment ever since the Congress came to power in the state.
On the contrary, the state government itself is facing a dearth of resources and has accused the Centre of not releasing funds.
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