Municipal Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal speaks to Eeshanpriya MS about BMC's fiscal health and the initiatives planned to address the city's deteriorating air quality. How is BMC's fiscal health? Five years ago, only 21% of the money was going to development projects and 79% was being used to pay salaries as well as on operation and maintenance works. Imagine how people must feel, we take Rs 100 from them in taxes and spend Rs 79 of it in our own establishment. Now, despite the fact that the budget has doubled, revenue expenditure has gone down from 79% to 48%. This is one of the best performances anywhere in the country. For the first time in the history of Mumbai, we have gone beyond the Rs 50,000-crore mark in the budget, there is nothing to criticise. This is a good thing for Mumbai. The BMC still dipped into its reserves in the form of internal loan/fund transfer of Rs 5970 crore. Last year, it was about Rs 4998 crore. I want to clarify what dipping is. The BMC has an infrastructure fund of Rs 15,000 crore. Let’s look at how the fund gets created and who is funding it. When we collect premiums from the real estate industry, we collect 22 types of premiums as we sanction a project. This amounts to Rs 4000 crore every year. A portion of this goes to the infrastructure fund. The idea to create the fund was that money should be pumped back into creating infrastructure for the city. Over the years, we have collected Rs 15,000 crore. When we transfer this fund to the budget, it is wrong to criticise that we are tapping into our reserves. It is a fund created for that purpose itself. Secondly, when I took over as BMC commissioner on May 8, 2020, BMC's fixed deposits (FD) stood at Rs 77,000 crore. I have given a major push to infrastructure – be it STPs or coastal road, desalination plant and concrete roads. Despite this, our FDs now stand at Rs 88,000 crore. The FDs have increased by Rs 11,000 crore during my tenure. No one can criticise me that I have depleted the FDs. This is despite the fact that I have issued work orders worth over Rs 75,000 crore. Your revenue income targets of last year were revised and reduced. Still, revenue income targets for this year have increased by Rs 2546 crore. When it came to property tax, last year we had an ambitious target to collect Rs 7000 crore. We took a hit of Rs 1000 crore because of a Supreme Court order that did not go in our favour. The SC has put a ceiling, due to which, our projected tax collection went down by Rs 1000 crore. Now, we are introducing e-auction of properties that have defaulted on tax. The e-auction will boost our recovery and clear pending dues. We are quite sure of achieving our targets. The Budget has announcements to address air pollution. Are they enough? The moment we bring in guidelines for the real estate industry, there will be a sea change in air pollution levels. There are over 3,500 construction sites in Mumbai today. Most projects are redevelopment projects. we are not going to open fields and start construction, we have to demolish first. These debris result in dust. If every site is protected by the project proponent, in the form of mist of sprinklers, technology that ensures dust does not spread, debris carried in covered vehicles. dust can be avoided. The same will apply to government construction sites as well. Air quality index in Mahul, Chembur and Wadala is always double than that of the rest of Mumbai. In these cases, we cannot be regulators, but we can be monitors, and will monitor air quality levels with consultants. We will have decentralised monitoring in Mumbai. In case of air purifying towers, they will have demonstration effect and there will be little change. There will be greater change if we take steps for the construction and real estate industries, power sector and the industry sector. Today, we have 3,500 BEST buses resulting in pollution due to the use of diesel. We will replace these buses with EVs by December. We will also get 3,500 CNG buses. We are doubling our fleet and also dealing with contributors to air pollution. This will be a game changer for Mumbai.
