BBMP budget 2022-23 put off; new date to be finalised

One-upmanship between C.N. Ashwath Narayan and R. Ashok camps said to be reason

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) 2022-23 Budget, which was initially scheduled to be presented on Wednesday, was put off at the last minute owing to objections raised by a group of city Ministers. There is now no clarity on when it will be presented.

In the absence of the elected council, the Budget is presented by the civic chief and approved by the administrator. It has to be presented before the end of the financial year, so as to have funding plans and funds in place ahead of the new fiscal.

This year, the Budget, according to highly placed sources, was scheduled to be presented on Wednesday. However, it is said that camps within the BJP were unhappy with the perceived partiality in allocation of funds to certain Assembly constitutencies represented by those who defected from Congress.

Sources said that there was a demand to have another round of discussions with all the city Ministers, especially Minister for Higher Education C.N. Ashwath Narayan and Minister for Revenue R. Ashok. Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, who holds the Bengaluru development portfolio as well, directed administrator Rakesh Singh, who is also Additional Chief Secretary of Urban Development Department, civic chief Gaurav Gupta and Special Commissioner (Finance) Thulasi Maddineni to discuss the allocations and sort out the differences. Following this, the officials took part in a marathon meeting on Tuesday evening.

Sources claimed that several changes had been suggested, which are likely to be incorporated. No other details were forthcoming, as the three top officials did not respond to calls.

Last fiscal, in March 2021, the BBMP Budget with an outlay of ₹9,287.81 crore was presented by Ms. Maddineni in the presence of the then administrator Gaurav Gupta and commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad.

Meanwhile, inputs received from citizens as part of #MyCityMyBudget, the annual particpatory budgeting campaign by BBMP in collaboration with Janaagraha, have been submitted to the civic body.