Post BJP’s comeback, NMC to present its first budget on Mar 18

Nagpur: After the BJP made a devastating return to power in Nagpur’s civic body, its now time to count on how it goes on janta’s pocket. Yes, its time for NMC budget. unicipal commissioner Shravan Hardikar will present the budget for 2017-18 at a special meeting of the standing committee to be held on March 18.
Based on this budget, newly elected chairman Sandip Jadhav will present the budget of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) either in April or May.

Hardikar will also present the revised budget for the current fiscal. The budgets were to be presented on or before February 5 but got delayed due to municipal polls followed by election of mayor and deputy mayor. As per the agenda issued on Wednesday, Hardikar will present budgets to Jadhav.

The revised budget will be based on the actual revenue of NMC up to February 28, 2017. In 11 months, the NMC has recovered only Rs1,042.09 crore. Sources said with just 15 days left for the current fiscal to end, it will not cross even the civic chief’s proposed target of Rs1,487cr revenue, while former standing committee chairman Sudhir Raut prepared Rs2,047 crore budgetary estimates for 2016-17.

Sources said the civic chief will cut the current budget by almost 30%. Also, he will not introduce any new taxes as the NMC will be implementing the new revamp tax system from the next financial year, which will itself increase the property tax by almost Rs350 crore per annum.