Kochi corporation council approves Rs 150 crore draft

KOCHI: A special session of the City Corporation council on Friday witnessed noisy scenes and heated arguments over the alleged ‘imbalance’ in Plan fund allocation to various divisions and favouritism shown by the Mayor and deputy Mayor to certain councillors. Both ruling bench and opposition councillors complained that funds allocated to basic necessities like road development was grossly inadequate. “Rs 40 lakh allocated for each division is not enough to carry out even basic repairing and tarring works,” alleged Sunila Selvan, CPM councillor.

Meanwhile, P.S. Prakash alleged that many of the project proposals discussed and included by ward level committees had been removed from the draft. The opposition councillors also criticized the civic administration for its failure to get the road asset development funds from the state government. “During the last fiscal, the civic body got Rs 33.61 crore as asset development fund while it was only Rs 19 crore this year,” said Thambi Subrahmanian.

Several other councillors from both benches raised similar complaints. Meanwhile, Mayor Soumini Jain refuted the allegations stating that no favouritism had been shown and all divisions had given equal importance. “All projects proposed by the councillors cannot be included due to financial constraints,” she added. Amidst heated arguments, Ms. Jain announced the draft as passed.