The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has incurred expenditure worth Rs 7,000cr on desilting and stormwater drain (SWD) activities in the past 10 years, highlighted the civic authority’s statistics that were sent in response to a Right to Information (RTI) application, reported the Times of India.
According to the account, of the Rs 7,000cr, Rs 1,000cr has been splurged on not just desilting nullahs across the city, but also the Mithi river.
The report goes on to elaborate that it was Ameet Satam the BJP MLA who received the information through the RTI Act. He elaborated that even though the civic authority has been incurring considerable expenses from 2010 to 2020, it has been unable to ensure that the city doesn’t flood.
The narrative quoted him saying that the civic chief Iqbal Singh Chahal had made false asserts that the desilting figures conducted by the body in 2020 and 2021 were 114% and 104% respectively. Satam believes that these are hallowed claims and even if it rains for just a few hours, the city gets flooded. He alleges that this is all but a misuse of the taxpayer's funds to finance contractors and attain kickbacks.
Satam claims that in a span of 10 years, the civic authority has exhausted nearly Rs 1,000cr for desilting the Mithi River, prominent nullahs, nullahs below railway tracks and small nullahs with Rs 140cr, Rs 460cr, Rs 26.6cr, Rs 338cr, being spent respectively. Additionally, he says that the civic authority has used Rs 6,000cr on SWD activities that comprise pumping stations, broadening of rivers, money for which he says has gone down the drain.
Post-BJP’s accusations that the civic authority hadn’t cleaned the city’s nullahs before monsoon, in June, the civic authority stated that it eliminated nearly 3.24 lakh tonnes of slit and finished 104% of desilting activities. Officials claimed that over 3.2 lakh tonnes of the slit were withdrawn from the drains as opposed to the 3.1 lakh tonnes goal.
In January, in yet another RTI application by Satam, the civic authority mentioned that its road department had incurred expenditure over Rs 21,000cr on mending, maintaining and constructing roads since 1997. The data depicted that the largest amount of Rs 3,201cr was incurred from 2013 and 2014. In 2015, then, the road scam emerged, leading to many questions.
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