Mussoorie MC presents surplus budget of Rs64 lakh

Tribune News Service

Mussoorie, March 27

A budget with an estimated surplus of around Rs 64 lakh was presented for the year 2015 at the Municipal Council meeting held in Mussoorie today. The estimated income has been put at around Rs 24 crore 75 lakh and 44,000, while the expenditure is estimated at around Rs 24 crore 11 lakh and 36 thousand rupees.

Most of the members showed their dissatisfaction at less revenue generation and blamed the officials for their carelessness in collection of taxes here.

Ward members Umesh Vaish, Ramesh Bhandari and Vinod Semwal, participating in the budget meeting, questioned the income shown in the budget by the officials and aired their dissent. The ward members said it was disheartening to know that only Rs 1.70 crore had been collected as income from various tax heads in comparison to the proposed income of Rs 4 crore so far.

The ward members questioned the working of the contractual employees who they said were a burden on the council exchequer. They said such employees were needed in the council office — They should be deployed to collect the taxes to increase the revenue base of the council or they should be removed with effect from April 1.

Municipal Council president Manmohan Singh Mall also took the MC officials to task and said if they were not ready to work, they should leave the job and sit at home.

Another ward member Jasvir Kaur, Beena Panwar and Sashi Rawat said the Municipal Council president had lost his control over the officials who were not ready to listen to the elected representatives, thus leading to less revenue collection work in the council.

Ward member Jasvir Kaur said corruption was rampant in the council and a CBI inquiry should be conducted so that the corrupt in the civic body are put behind bars.

The proposal for increasing the license fee at the slaughterhouse also cropped up at the meeting. The proposal for construction of a housing facility on the land belonging to the Municipal Council and amendment in archaic bylaws also came up at the meeting. The other proposals passed at the meeting pertain to construction of a gate at Gadikhana, repair work on public utilities in the town and stopping encroachment into public property. Ward members Arvind Sonkar, Vrendar Panwar, Kuldeep Rawat and others were present on the occasion.