In poll year, BMC budget bumps up Fadnavis-Shinde projects, avoids risk

With the BMC’s financial liabilities going up to Rs 1.93 lakh crore, there was an expectation that the BMC would revise housing and water taxes. But that did not happen — underlining the ruling Fadnavis-Shinde establishment was looking to play it safe. This was the third time that the BMC’s budget was announced in the absence of an elected body, after the term of elected representatives or municipal corporators got dissolved in March, 2022. Since then, state-appointed commissioners have been running the BMC. In March 2024, the then Shinde-Fadnavis government appointed IAS officer Bhushan Gagrani as the administrator and municipal commissioner.

The highest funding of Rs 5,807 crore in this year’s civic budget was routed towards the ambitious Mumbai Coastal road project (MCRP) for its extension from Versova to Bhayander. Fadnavis pushed for the project during his tenure as CM between 2014 and 2019, with its first phase being inaugurated in March 2024.

Mumbai’s road concretisation project — a brainchild of Shinde — also got an allocation of Rs 3,100 crore in Wednesday’s Budget. Announcing the project in 2022 soon after taking charge as the CM, Shinde had said that the project would make the entire city “pothole free” in two years. Since the first work order under the project was issued in 2023, only 26% of the project has been executed. Senior officials stating a total of 187 roads have been concretised so far.

In his budget speech, Gagrani said the civic body aims to achieve 75% of this project in the next financial year.

At a time when Mumbai’s water crisis has emerged as a key concern and could also become a major electioneering agenda in the upcoming polls, the BMC allocated Rs 4,000 crore for the water supply project (WSP) department of which Rs 2,270 crore has been earmarked for constructing water conveyance tunnels in Mumbai.

Alongside this, the Gargai dam project — which had been put in the the back burner by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in 2019 amid concerns of the project affecting 4.5 lakh trees — also found its way back to the budget table on Tuesday. Drawing a provision of Rs. 36 crore, the project seeks to augment Mumbai’s water supply.

Another lion’s share of Rs 5,545 crore from the budget was allocated for the Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) project, which aims to provide Mumbai an additional 2,464 Million Liters (MLD) of water every day by recycling 80% of the city’s daily waste water.

Leaders from the ruling alliance said the budget only affirms the quality and success of the ongoing civic projects ahead of the BMC election.

Deputy CM Shinde took to social media and said the budget was “progressive and inclusive”.

“The BMC’s budget that was presented today doesn’t include any hike in taxes or penalties. It is clear from this that Mumbai is moving fast towards a bright future. This progressive as well as inclusive budget is just the beginning of a new Mumbai, where facilities like health, sanitation and education will be imparted to every citizen irrespective of their background,” Shinde said in a post made in social media site X.

Posting a video on his X handle, state Cabinet minister and BJP Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar said the budget was a testament to Mumbai’s progress.

“The BMC budget is a complete proposition towards Mumbai’s development that will turn Mumbaikars dreams into reality. This is a holistic budget from every aspect as it has proposed infrastructure growth as well as environment sustainability,” Shelar said.

Maharashtra Assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar, who is an MLA from Mumbai’s Colaba, said the budget was development centric without burdening the citizens with additional taxation.

BJP Mulund MLA Mihir Kotecha welcomed the revival of the Gargai dam project.

“It is good to see that the Gargai project has been revived. I have previously raised the pressing issue of Mumbai’s water supply crisis and if we do not build a new reservoir within the next five years, Mumbai’s water supply shortfall could rise exponentially,” said Kotecha.

On March 7, 2022, the five-year term of elected representatives in the BMC got dissolved after the civic elections, which was supposed to be held on February that year, got deferred following Supreme Court’s (SC) decision of scrapping the Other Backward Class (OBC) quota for local body elections.

Alongside this, for Mumbai, there was also an additional issue of reorganisation of the municipal ward boundaries, that led to the deferment of the civic polls. The top court is yet to give a verdict on the OBC issue. The next hearing has been scheduled on February 25.

However, with the ruling Mahayuti alliance getting a decisive mandate in the recently concluded state assembly elections, there is a high chance of civic elections happening in Mumbai as well as other parts of Maharashtra this year, because the BJP looking to make inroads in to the BMC that was earlier a bastion of the then undivided Shiv Sena.