Mysore civic body passes budget sans councillors

The Mysore City Corporation has presented a Rs 13.69-lakh surplus budget. The meeting attended by 20 officials witnessed no debate, as no elected representative was present.

The Rs 114-crore 2007-08 budget has no major allocation for any significant project, but relies on the Centre's Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Reconstruction Mission (JNNURM) for its future development. The net revenue of the MCC is only Rs 62.41 crore, the rest being grants.

Of the anticipated revenue of Rs 114.43 crore, inclusive of an opening balance of Rs 6.87 crore, about 50 per cent (over Rs 56 crore) goes towards salaries and other establishment expenses, with hardly Rs 18 crore left for capital expenditure.

Surprisingly, the revenue of Rs 114.43 crore is a little less than the revised revenue of Rs 114.51 crore for 2006-07.

Its major revenue sources are general property tax (Rs 21.85 crore against Rs 21.25 crore revised revenue in 2006-07), water supply (Rs 15.30 crore, against Rs 14.47 crore), licence fees (Rs 5.71 core against Rs 6.72 crore), rent (Rs 2.52 crore against Rs 1.50 crore, which indicates that the rents may rise), and tax share on property sale (Rs 25 lakh).

The expected government grants are Rs 37.49 crore.

Though a sum of Rs 1.60 crore has been allocated for constructing buildings, except the Makkaji Chowk Complex which has been entrusted to a Bangalore-based private firm for constructing a mall, the rest of the three proposed complexes continue to suffer with no allocation.

The quarter-century-old partially-built Mayura complex, City Centre Complex Annexe and Netaji Subash Chandra Bose commercial complex have a token provision of Rs 10,000.

The city's water supply of 32:60 mgd will get a boost when another 11 mgd will flow from the Melapura project II stage.

The worn-out Hongalli and Belagola pumps and machinery will be replaced and a jackwell installed at Balamuri, near KRS, to draw water directly from the river instead of the Devaraya channel.