MUMBAI: At its general body meeting on Friday, the BMC House formally sanctioned a Rs 250-crore mayor’s development fund — the highest ever allocation in the history of the civic body. It would earlier be in the range of Rs 100 crore to Rs 200 crore.The fund will be distributed to corporators based on the mayor’s recommendations. Officials said the increase in the mayor’s discretionary fund was made by reallocating funds from key departments, including solid waste management, road concreting and bridges departments.With the capital expenditure also being approved at Friday’s meeting, budget provisions are expected to be rolled out for civic works across Mumbai, including infrastructure upgrades, sanitation projects and ward-level development initiatives.The revenue expenditure was cleared last month. However, the standing committee’s earlier approval of an Rs 800crore development fund triggered a political controversy over alleged uneven distribution among corporators.Initially, all corporators were allotted around Rs 2.25 crore each, but certain wards reportedly received significantly higher allocations ranging between Rs 5 crore and Rs 20 crore, leading to protests from opposition members and internal dissent within the ruling alliance.Standing committee chairman Prabhakar Shinde and BMC House leader Ganesh Khankar, both from BJP, had been allocated over Rs 20 crore for their respective wards. Corporators from BJP MLA Ameet Satam’s constituency were reportedly allotted Rs 6 crore each, further fuelling debate over preferential distribution.Following the row, the allocations were revised, with Rs 54 crore being cut from the standing committee’s development fund and redirected to civic welfare schemes, including the sanitation workers’ housing and welfare initiative. Officials said Rs 15 crore each was reduced from Shinde’s and Khankar’s allocations as part of the restructuring exercise.Further, after Satam had reportedly written to the standing committee seeking rationalisation of the allocations, additional funds of corporators from his assembly constituency were trimmed by nearly Rs 3.75 crore per corporator, bringing them in line with the standard allocation of Rs 2.25 crore per ward.
