Nagpur: Municipal Commissioner and Administrator Dr Abhijeet Chaudhari on Thursday presented Rs 5,523.73 crore civic budget for the financial year 2024-25, outlining a continued thrust on infrastructure projects, and primarily making Nagpur tanker-free. This is the highest ever financial allocation for civic budget in history of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), thanks to the generous aid from the State Government.
In fact, the civic budget carries forward a surplus of Rs 1,234.97 crore, the grants received from the State for various ongoing projects which were aimed at enhancing the living standards of citizens and upgrading the civic infrastructure.
Today’s Rate
Sat 16 Nov. 2024
Interacting with newspersons post adoption of Civic Budget at the Civic Headquarters in Civil Lines, the Commissioner outlined the agenda that is going to be implemented in the forthcoming financial year. He said the focus remains on fulfilling the aspirations of commoners. Also, this being the election year, the Municipal Commissioner has carried forward the tradition of presenting a tax-free budget much to the relief of Nagpurians.
Anchal Goyal, Additional Municipal Commissioner; Prithviraj B P, Chief Executive Officer, Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited (NSSCDCL); Sunil Lahane, Additional Municipal Commissioner; Sadashiv Shelke, Chief Audit and Finance Officer; Nirbhay Jain and Ravindra Bhelave, both Deputy Commissioners, were present at the civic budget press interaction.
The last budget presented by the then Municipal Commissioner for the year 2023-24 was pegged at around Rs 3,267.63 crore, but with substantial inflow of grants from the State from time to time. The revised budget presented today pegged the receipts at Rs 4,889.45 crore with expenditure outlined at Rs 3,654.48 crore. However, Dr Chaudhari said that expected receipts in the next year is estimated to be Rs 4,330.10 crore, which indicates increase in compensation of GST and also from stamp duty, and with addition of surplus of Rs 1234.97 crore, the total outlay is fixed at Rs 5,565.70 crore.
At the outset, Dr Chaudhari explained reason for substantial surplus that is reflected in budget, saying as the grants were received from State quite late the same could not be utilised during the current financial year. The process is that after a project to be funded by State gets administrative approval, NMC has to complete the tender process and award the work order and then only the grant components are released. So the entire procedure is time consuming and hence NMC could not utilise the funds during the current year. However he quickly added that the amount is going to be utilised in the next year as all the ground work for the projects have been completed.
REVENUE: The main thrust of revenue generation on part of NMC remains on auctioning its land parcels as it realised Rs 267.53 crore while next year Rs 95 crore is expected to be netted. Already, four land parcels on Orange Street have been awarded and one more that of Budhwar Peth Market. Besides Commissioner said the NMC is trying to increase its receipts from the property tax whose target is now kept at Rs 330 crore.
The total properties with NMC database now stands at 6.79 lakh. Another important thing that Dr Choudhari underlined was digitisation of land record. The same will help in identifying the properties and ensuring that none of them goes without recovery of legal dues, he said, while replying to a query. He denied that NMC is entirely dependent on State for its finances, pointing out that in the next year budget of the Rs 5,565 core outlay, Rs 3,230 crore are projected to be internal accruing, means maximum thrust is on increasing revenue from internal resources.
The internal accruing also includes Rs 1,640.74 crore to be received as GST compensation, an increase of 8 percent, and Rs 70 crore from Stamp Duty. Since GST is alternative to Octroi hence same is counted as internal accruing, he explained further.
TANKER FREE CITY: Commenting on the water cess, Commissioner said the thrust next year is on reducing non revenue water (NRW ) component and ensure that entire city gets 24×7 drinking water supply. Already Mangalwari, Gandhibagh and Dhantoli are tanker free zones and rest of the six zones too would soon get that tag. For the same 32 new elevated water reservoirs are under construction of which 16 have been completed and of the 377 km of new pipeline work about 337 km is already laid. These works were part of Amrut Yojana and now Amrut Yojana 2.0 is going to be taken for laying 42 km of feeder pipeline, 217 km of new pipelines in non network area, affixing booster pumps to lift the water to elevated localities and providing 50,000 new taps. NMC realised Rs 147 crore against target of Rs 210 crore so far from water cess and for next year the target is set at Rs 250 crore.
POHRA RIVER POLLUTION ABATEMENT PROJECT: Under the pollution abatement and reviving of water bodies, the project is divided in four segments and for the same tender process have been initiated. A two year time frame is set for completion of the work.
TOWN PLANNING: The Town Planning Department is the cash cow of the NMC as it netted revenue of Rs 187.40 crore till end of November and further Rs 76.61 crore are expected till March end. The target was surpassed quite early and hence for next year the target is set at Rs 339 crore. The increase in revenue from map sanctioning also mirrors the trend of the economy which is quite upbeat. NEW PROJECTS: A novel Clean Street Food Hub is planned by NMC at its land near Narendra Nagar bridge. This is part of Central Government’s scheme for development of 100 Clean Food Street Hub and the civic body will et Rs 1 crore from Government and estimated cost of project is pegged at Rs 3.80 crore.
PARKS: Similarly NMC also plans a bio-diversity park on 70 acres land at Gorewada which the Municipal Commissioner is part of its commitment to develop additional green spots in city. Such parks would serve as lungs for the city. Also theme based gardens are going to be developed including Fragrance garden at Sant Dyaneshwar Sanjeevan Samadhi Garden in Dattatray Nagar. A Waste to Wonder Park, Herbal Park and Ayurvedic Park are also on cards. Similarly the much awaited redevelopment of Dr Shrikant Jichkar Traffic Park would also be undertaken during the next financial year. Also 15 street dividers would be beautified plus development of 18 vertical gardens.
