Mumbai: With eyes on elections BMC to table 179 proposals of Rs 2,300 crores projects

It's raining proposals in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)'s ahead of what could be the last standing committee meeting on Wednesday, March 2. As the term of the corporators ends next week, Mumbai civic body's standing committee seems to be in a rush to clear a total of 179 proposals of purchases and projects worth Rs 2,300 crores this week.

This is likely to be the last standing committee meeting as the term of the current corporators will end next week that is on March 08, 2022. Due to this, there is a possibility that proposals worth hundreds and thousands of crore may be passed in a matter of a few hours on Wednesday. The Standing Committee is one of the BMC's highest decision-making bodies apart from the General body.

BJP has demanded that all proposals of the standing committee should be withdrawn owing to the income tax raid at the standing committee chairman's (Shiv Sena leader Yashwant Jadhav's) residence on Friday. BJP leader and MLC Rajhans Singh in a press statement said, "It is not appropriate to approve such a large number of proposals worth thousands of crores before the committee, given the raid by the Income-tax department at the house of committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav and objections and opposition raised by us during the last standing committee meeting."

This is supposedly the last standing committee meeting of the current term of corporators, which will come to an end on March 8 after that the BMC will be unable to pass any major proposal. However, the last standing committee meeting is the only explanation for the rush to push last-minute projects (worth 2,300 crores) through.

BJP corporators have opposed the move. "We will not allow this. Only urgent and emergency proposals should be tabled, discussed and cleared. Why such a rush? The proposal of clearing the payments of jumbo centres is a scam and we had already opposed the. We will move court if these proposals are passed in a hurry and without discussions," said BJP corporators Vinod Mishra.

Some of the proposals

Of the 179 proposals, the majority of the proposals are from the health department wherein post facto approval of more than Rs 1,000 crore was proposed in the form of Covid-19 expenditure.

So far, the Mumbai civic body has spent Rs 3,461 crore as the overall expenditure towards various Covid-19 containment measures between March 2020 to February 11, 2022, according to the proposals to be tabled on Wednesday. The BMC has stated that in the past two years it had allocated Rs 3,700 crore for the expenditure on Covid-19. In the budget 2022-23, the civic body has estimated a bill of Rs 2,764 crore on fighting Covid-19 and sought reimbursement from the state for all these expenses.

There are also proposals for Covid-19 jumbo centres including-Dahisar check naka, NESCO - Goregaon, BKC jumbo centres etc.

There are several proposals for renewing water lines across the city wherever road constructions are being carried out.

Rs 380 crore proposal for trench filling works across Mumbai.

There are proposals worth Rs 65 crore of tenders floated for the desilting of minor and major nullahs and rivers.

Several proposals of expenditure towards the maintenance of open spaces/gardens

The agenda for the standing committee also includes proposals from several other departments including solid waste management, stormwater drains department, Mumbai Fire Brigade.