Fiscal mismanagement of the three Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled civic bodies has reached such a pitiable state that their entire revenue is not even sufficient to pay salaries to their employees. So forget about civic services and development works.
According to senior officers, it is not the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-ruled Delhi government but the inefficiency of the political dispensation at the Corporations to check corruption and revenue leakage. Also, their inability to bring more citizens within the tax net and tap idle sources of revenue for the past nine years’ of BJP rule have pushed the once financially viable civic bodies to the brink.
It would be pertinent to mention that internal revenue of the three Corporations is pegged at Rs 5,975 crore while their combined wage bill is set to touch Rs 6,240 crore excluding the additional burden of over Rs 2,000 crore due to implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations. As per budget estimates of North MCD, the salary expenditure of the Corporation is Rs2,640 crore – while their internal revenue is only Rs 2,375 crore. The situation in East MCD is similar as the agency has a gap of Rs 95 crore in their internal income and expenditure on salaries for the financial year 2015-16. The condition of South MCD is marginally better as the civic body has estimated earnings of Rs 2,755 crore against salary expenditure of Rs 2,640. Furthermore, revenue by way of house tax, parking fees, advertisement, conversion charges, building plan sanction, etc do not come in regularly leading to delay in payment of salaries and other expenses. This is the situation when around 40 per cent posts are vacant and a majority of the employees are contractual workers who are paid less than their permanent counterparts. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that the Corporations are not able to continue their primary responsibilities like sanitation, health and primary education. The expenditure of these three departments has surpassed the total revenue of the civic bodies. The three agencies have an estimated expenditure of Rs 2,628 crore on sanitation, Rs 1,252 crore on health and Rs 2,476 crore on education or Rs 6,356 crore in total for three overheads. While the MCDs have a total budget estimate of around Rs 14,300 crore of which Rs 6,240 crore( nearly 50 per cent of the total budget), is likely to go into paying salaries and the rest is expected to be spent on sanitation, education and health sectors. “North Corporation could collect only Rs 2,376 crore as internal revenue against the target of Rs 3,612 crore. This amount was Rs 547 crore less than the Rs 2,924 crore collected in 2012-13. Similarly the revenue collection in 2013-14 was also around Rs 500 crore less than the previous year. The data clearly shows the dip in revenue collection due to inefficiency of the Corporation ,” said Mukesh Goel, Leader of Opposition in North MCD. “The unrealistic revenue targets further go against the Corporation as Delhi government does not pay 1.5 per cent Municipal Reform Funds (MRF) due to non-achievement of fiscal targets,” he pointed out. Things came to such a pass in 2015 that the Corporations had to withdraw a whopping Rs 550 crore from GPF (general provident fund) to meet day to day expenses.
The allocations to various departments to provide civic services, basic health and primary education are only on paper. “In 2014-15 over Rs 428 crore were allocated for various development activities out of which only Rs 17.6 crore was utilised. In this year, Rs 119 crore for unauthorised colonies and Rs 30 crore for rural development were untouched,” said a senior officer in the accounts department of north MCD. As per the budget data, in the current year, allocations amounting Rs 345 crore for various development works were not utilised till December 2015.