Opp.Parties Reaction To Corp's Budjet
Most of the Opposition parties in the Coimbatore Corporation Council are of the opinion that there is no point in rehashing announcements on schemes in successive budgets of the civic bodyReacting to the proposals in the Corporation budget presented on Wednesday, Opposition parties such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) pointed out that some of the major projects that find a place in the budget are not new.No point in rehashing announcements on schemes in successive budgets
Bharatiya Janata Party National Council Member S.R. Seghar said in a release on Thursday that the budget was an eyewash. The parties said major initiatives such as the Rs.377-crore underground drainage scheme, the Rs.113-crore Pilloor phase II drinking water scheme, the Rs.96-crore integrated solid waste management project were yet to take off. Councillors indicated that this would be one of the main issues that would figure in the discussions on the budget on Friday.
“The drainage, water and waste management schemes have been figuring in successive budgets of the Corporation for at least eight years,” leader of the AIADMK in the Council P. Rajkumar said. A meeting of the councillors belonging to the party was held on Thursday to discuss what line to take at the budget related meeting on Friday.
When this charge was pointed out to him, Corporation Commissioner P. Muthuveeran said all the schemes were ready for take off. But, as they were very major ones, the procedure involved in clearance was time-consuming. “We have done our best to get these implemented,” he said. The Opposition said some of the schemes could have taken off. For instance, the satellite bus terminal proposed on Mettupalayam Road need not have taken so much time to cross the proposal stage. The scheme had been appearing in the budget for more than five years. The scheme to build a new Corporation Council building at Rs.1 crore had also been pending for some years.
The Corporation would not be able to claim credit for bringing out a result-oriented budget if the schemes were not implemented, the parties said. They felt that by bringing all the pending projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the Corporation had tactfully attempted to ward of criticism for its inability to get any of these implemented.The Opposition also wondered why some of the projects figured in the budget this time also when the Corporation claimed that they had actually reached the stage of take off.
Even as the budget mentioned a Rs.14 crore increase in the allocation for development works, the BJP release said the outlay was inadequate to improve basic amenities. The release also said that the menace of stray dogs was rising in the city again. (The budget said that 6,000 dogs would be covered this year for animal birth control surgery.) While the budget said Rs.1 crore would be spent on building overhead water tanks for the newly regularised layouts, the Opposition said it was not happy with the way these layouts were being treated. They complained that the demand for roads in these areas was being ignored by the Corporation.
Explaining the Corporation’s position, the Commissioner said the civic body did not want to lay tar roads as it might have to dig these to lay underground sewers, drinking water lines and construct storm water drains. “We do not want waste funds by re-laying the roads. These will be provided after the water and sewer lines are laid.”
