BENGALURU: Bengaluru’s municipality Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP)will spend Rs 9241.05 crore in 2017-18 to win the confidence of a frazzled city and perhaps win the election for chief minister Siddaramaiah next year.
The BBPM’s budget, presented Saturday by its Taxation and Finance Committee chairman M K Gunashekar, targets Bengaluru’s poor and looks like an exact replica of the state budget presented by chief minister Siddaramaiah on March 15.
Here’s what Bengalureans are promised -- but remember the budget for 2017-18 has many ‘spillover’ items, aka projects mentioned but forgotten last year.
· 210 new parks will be built in newly added zones of BBMP
· 10 lakh saplings will be planted. Really.
· There will be tree parks in BBMP schools and colleges
· Water tanks in BBMP parks
· BBMP will launch a mobile app on which citizens can ask for saplings to be planted in their locality
· tax rebate for citizens if they come up with a public parking facility on their premises
· parking facility in old unused BBMP markets
· khatas online
· online building plan approvals
· generic medicines will be made available in all BBMP health centres
· Rs 4 crore set apart to supply stents to the poor
· superspecialty hospitals will be set up in Shivajinagar, BTM layout and Sarvajnanagar
· 20 dialysis centres in various Assembly constituencies
· Blackboards in BBMP schools and colleges will be replaced with green boards
And what about garbage? Well finally, some money, Rs 7 cropre, has been set apart to hire garbage marshals, or rubbish cops who will penalize citizens if they litter.
The waste segregation initiative will be spread to more localitiesand compose purchase centres will be opened in all 198 wards.
And road cutting will attract a penalty of Rs. 10 lakh if it for a residential purpose and Rs. 25 lakh for a commercial purpose.