By IANS,
New Delhi : The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) Thursday cited a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report that says that although 88 percent of the capital’s roads are under the civic agency’s purview, allocations are “meagre” and unjust.
According to the CAG report for the year till March 2008: “The MCD, which maintained 88 percent of Delhi’s road network, received very meagre allocations from the government compared to the PWD (Public Works Department) which maintained only 7.6 percent of the roads.”
“In the absence of relevant database on its road network, the MCD could not have even put up a considered case for increased allocations to the government of Delhi. The MCD accepted the facts (January 2009),” it added.
Citing this CAG document, MCD leader of the house Subhash Arya told reporters that the report reflected the real ground situation without “political bias”.
“The PWD in the past decade has been given 15 to 53 times higher amount than the MCD for maintaining roads. This is a step-motherly and differential treatment! It is not the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads the MCD, or the MCD that pointed this out. This is the audit report’s observation,” Arya told reporters.
The PWD comes under the Congress-ruled Delhi government.
According to the audit report, of Delhi’s 30,923-km long road network, the MCD is responsible for the upkeep of 27,139 km of roads. Of this, Arya said, 16,826 km were urban city roads and the rest were in rural areas.
The PWD is responsible for 2,350 km of the roads.
“We want answers from Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit that if the number and length of roads we maintain is higher, then why is it that we don’t get more allocations?” Arya stressed.
Arya also held that the MCD often had to overstep allocations and that the non-planned expenditure on road re-doing and maintaining urban roads was Rs.1 billion. This year, until now, the MCD has been granted Rs.750 million by the Delhi government for spending on roads.
In 2007-2008, while the MCD received Rs.1.7 billion, the PWD received Rs.6.2 billion – per km 26 times more – as funding for road schemes.
The MCD alleged that even in the subsequent year, the PWD received 53 times more per km than the MCD’s outlay of Rs.1.25-billion.
The corporation has drawn flak for its shoddy maintenance of the roads that give away after one seasonal downpour. Potholes and poor drainage along the city’s roads result in accidents and regular traffic jams and the repair work is often delayed.
“Our allocations are so less. We do what we can in our limited budget. In fact, the MCD is working to make all urban roads free from potholes by the first week of October,” Arya concluded.