NEW DELHI: With allocation of funds from the Delhi government under various heads allegedly drying up, South Delhi Municipal Corporation has been forced to revise its budgetary allocation in the middle of the financial year. Its standing committee has now unanimously approved an emergency measure to redistribute funds.The allocation in various sectors like street-lighting, improvement of roads, maintenance work and rural area development have been curtailed during the revision exercise. For example, the funds for hiring sanitation workers for unauthorised colonies has been reduced from Rs 10 crore to Rs 8 crore, the same for maintenance work from Rs 25 crore to Rs 20 crore while the road improvement head has seen a dip from Rs 15 crore to Rs 10 crore. The corporation has also allotted Rs 10 crore less for rural area development.“We were undertaking work as per the allocations made in March but no allocation under the plan head of the account has been made by the Delhi government for the financial year 2018-19. Therefore, our finance department has suggested to make allocations under these heads as a contingency measure till the funds come from the government,” a senior corporation official said.A Delhi government official, however, claimed that the AAP government had given more funds to the corporations than all previous governments despite the fact that Delhi has been receiving only Rs 325 crore as its share in central taxes for the past 17 years.According to the corporation data, it had received Rs 452.56 crore under the urban development head during 2017-18, which has now been slashed to 0. “This has happened for the first time in the corporation’s history. Similarly, last year’s allocation of Rs 20 crore for the transport sector has become zero,” the official said, adding that even the grant-in-aid for sanitation-related activities has not come.In the revised budget , Rs 68 crore has been worked out from various heads of the engineering department while another Rs 32 crore has been extracted from other heads, which fall under the revenue account. For example, Rs 10 crore has come from maintenance and repair funds for municipal buildings and toilets, Rs 1.5 crore from medicine and equipment, Rs 1 crore from scholarship of girl child and Rs 6 crore from uniform purchasing funds. The allocation for improvement of Arya Bhatta Science Museum, too, has been reduced from Rs 3 crore to Rs 2 crore. The revenue account has seen a reduction of Rs 32 crore from Rs 76 crore, the official said.Mayor Narender Chawla demanded Rs 505 crore under various heads. “Only Rs 137.6 crore has been released in the first quarter against an budget proposal of Rs 1,579.19 crore,” said Chawla.

Stay updated with all the Delhi Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.