Reactions to the BBMP budget

Mr Srikanth Viswanathan, CEO, Janaagraha
The BBMP has improved its financial performance over the last couple of years and is doing better than the BDA, BWSSB and the BMTC in at least a few aspects of financial management, although a lot more needs to be done.

Over the past few years, the BBMP has managed to grow its receipts at 30 per cent annually which is a healthy growth rate and  has set itself an ambitious target in 2017-18.

With the budgetary grants going up by Rs 1,000 crore, we need to see whether the BBMP can mop up Rs 1,400 crore in additional receipts. It appears that significant amounts of pending bills have been paid.

Going by the budget speech over 7,600 bills amounting to Rs 1,167 crore have been paid in 2016-17. Overall, this seems a positive budget in terms of fiscal responsibility and management.

D. S. Rajashekar, President, Citizen's Action Forum
The BBMP budget with its many schemes to woo voters,  has clearly been  planned keeping the upcoming assembly elections in view.

Although garbage segregation and composting at the ward level is a welcome move, why has as much as Rs 751 crore been allocated for Solid Waste Management ? When the garbage is managed at the ward level there will be lesser of it to transport , requiring lesser expenditure on SWM.

Sridhar Pabbisetty, CEO, Namma Bengaluru Foundation
It's a lopsided and unrealistic budget. The budget outlay of Rs 9,241 crore is overly ambitious as last year only Rs 6,823 crore was spent.

No fresh or innovative effort has  been announced for revenue generation and expenditure management. The vision for  managing wet waste at the ward level is a good move, however. Measures to improve e-governance seem half- hearted.

Kathyayini Chamaraj, CIVIC Bangalore
It is again an unrealistic budget as the more than Rs 9,000 crore budget of last year remained unfulfilled. So the parks and trees promised at a hike in budget of 800 per cent will probably remain unrealised at the end of the year.

That no parking fees, which was promised several years ago, or congestion tax for entering dense traffic-areas, have not been imposed shows a disinclination to do the easiest thing to ease traffic congestion, instead of dreaming of expensive flyovers and expressways