The empowered standing committee of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) on Tuesday approved a deficit budget of Rs 49 crore for the 2012-13 fiscal. The budget will now be presented before the PMC board for discussion next week before it is forwarded to the state government.

Sources said all the seven members of the committee, including the mayor and the deputy mayor, recommended the budget for detailed discussion in the board after PMC commissioner Pankaj Kumar Pal proposed it in Tuesday’s meeting.

The Telegraph had earlier reported that the civic body has proposed a deficit budget for the sixth consecutive year.

Mayor Afzal Imam said in the budget, PMC proposes an income generation of Rs 227.64 crore for the next financial year, while the expenditure is expected to be around Rs 276.96 crore, implying a sharp fall in income generation.

“The budget draft was prepared by the accounts department in consultation with Urban Technical Assistance Support Team, a private agency. Like last year’s budget, this year’s budget too shows that PMC is running very high loss of revenues. But no concrete measure has been proposed to meet the revenue losses,” sources said.

In the 2011-12 budget, PMC had a deficit of Rs 29 crore. Barring 2006-07 when the PMC had registered marginal profit of Rs 14 crore, the civic body has been running in losses for over a decade.

Sources said the budget draft shows that PMC has failed to meet even 70 per cent of holding tax revenues.

The proposal for the next year, however, pins hopes on revenue generated by way of taxes to be collected from hoarding agencies and telecom firms.

Push for streetlights

Apart from budget approval, the committee members also urged the executive officials to expedite the installation of 50 streetlights in each of the 72 wards under the corporation. The project involves an expenditure of around Rs 73.8 lakh.

Around two months ago, the committee had recommended that tenders be floated for installing streetlights in all the wards at a cost of Rs 2,050 each.

“The corporation subsequently floated tenders and the project was awarded to a private agency that had submitted the lowest bid. They are now preparing the technical draft. We want them to complete the long-pending work at the earliest and Patna High Court has been pulling up the corporation over the issue,” Imam said.