HYDERABAD: The special budget meeting of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) followed by the third ordinary meeting will be held at the Council Hall of GHMC Head Office on Tuesday. The members are expected to discuss and approve the budget estimates for 2022-23 and revised budget estimates for 2021-22. They are also likely to approve 76 items that were passed in the previous Standing Committee meetings.
‘’As this is a budget meeting, the amounts that were sanctioned for various GHMC wings need to be discussed thoroughly in the interest of the public. The meeting cannot be wrapped in one or two hours. The budget meeting is followed by an ordinary meeting to discuss the questions raised by corporators from various political parties. So the meeting should be held for two to three days to discuss all the matters pertaining to residents,” said BJP Corporator Devara Karunakar.
With a strength of 47, BJP corporators say they would raise various public issues during the meeting and point out the loopholes and gaps in the budget. They are also likely to raise several civic issues such as sanitation, roads, street lights, works regarding nalas and stormwater drains and the coming monsoon season, among other things. In the last physical meeting held in December last year, no important public issues were allowed to discuss and the meeting was concluded in a few hours, they added. “Hyderabad Mayor Gadwal Vijayalaxmi has stifled the opposition voice and exposed her failure in running the meetings smoothly,” said Karunakar. Security arrangements are also being made for the meeting to prevent any untoward incidents from occurring.
After the GHMC polls in 2020, this would be the second physical meeting of the civic body members after the meeting in December 2021. A virtual meeting was held in June last year. Of the 150 corporators, TRS has 56, BJP has 47, the AIMIM has 44 and the Congress have three. The TRS and BJP parties have organised internal meetings for their corporators and given them adequate training on how to proceed at the meeting.
The GHMC annual budget has to be approved under Section 186 of the GHMC Act, 1955, read with Rule No 6 of the GHMC Budget Estimates Rules, 1968. As per the GHMC Act, the budget was to be approved by the Standing Committee in November last year and passed in the general body in December 2021, however it got delayed. All the 76 items that were passed in the previous Standing Committee meetings would be ratified in the council meeting.