Opposition parties on Saturday criticised the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC's) Rs 52,619-crore budget for the financial year 2023-24, while the BJP hailed it as 'people-centric'. In a series of tweets, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray claimed that the budget has been drafted to benefit the “contractor lobby”. "The unconstitutional state Govt and the @mybmc governed by the administrator has been showing moral and legal bankruptcy for 6 months. Today’s BMC budget shows that it has begun to pave way for Mumbai’s financial bankruptcy," tweeted Aaditya. "While it’s good that there’s no big ticket project announcement. the BMC has shown higher expenditure on old projects, which is uncalled for. It is a contractor-driven budget, evidently," he added. Ravi Raja, former leader of opposition in BMC, said that while the civic body's revenue stream is shrinking, it has announced a budget that is 14.5% higher than last year. "The budget has no plan to increase the shrinking revenue and it is clear that they will dip into fixed deposits of BMC. Though the figure of 80,000 crore of fixed deposits looks impressive on paper, most of the deposits are of PF and gratuity of employees, which the BMC can't touch. So, technically only 20,000 crore of fixed deposits are at disposal for @mybmc. out of which the administration is planning to utilise 15,000 crore. So very soon BMC will be running out of money, and especially will have no money to support any contingency," tweeted Raja. Samajwadi Party MLA Rais Shaikh also criticised the administration for not taking the people's representatives into confidence while presenting its largest budget yet. "This is the biggest budget in the history of the civic body, which tried to mislead Mumbaikars by giving empty promises like every year through this budget. The administration has failed to fully provide for the implementation of previous schemes." However, Ashish Shelar, BJP legislator from Bandra and president of the party's Mumbai unit, hailed it as a “citizen's budget”. "In the past 25 years, the budget included only works suggested by contractors. Finally this has changed, the BMC has this year come through on the demands of Mumbaikars, meeting their expectations through a people's budget. This budget is not about cut and commission but about development," said Shelar.
