VASCO: The Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC) on Wednesday created a history by passing a surplus budget of Rs 4.57 crore for the financial year 2018 2019.
However, a group of ten councillors including Vice Chairperson Shashikant Parab staged a walkout before the council could start budget discussion, citing that they were not provided with annexure summary of the budget documents along with the agenda copy.
Councillor Kritesh Gaonkar questioned why the council members were not provided annexure summary of budget documents along with the agenda copy and whether the same was done with some hidden agenda. This triggered heated exchange of words among council members and later ten councillors including Vice Chairperson Shashikant Parab staged a boycott and left council hall.
Speaking to reporters, the aggrieved councillors claimed that since the full budget document was not provided to them, they decided to boycott the meeting.
“Firstly, we are upset that the council is run dictatorially. Secondly, keeping faith in municipality, several companies donate funds to municipality under CSR activity, but those funds have been used without following proper procedure. When the accountant concerned pointed out this irregularity, the dictators from this municipality took away her charge and assigned the same to some other person. I feel that chairperson totally failed here and he should therefore resign from his chair,” Councillor Kritesh Gaonkar demanded.
Raising similar concerns, other aggrieved Councillors including Saifulla Khan, Leo Rodrigues and Krishan Salkar alleged that the MMC chairperson has been playing dirty politics by taking up developmental works selectively and has been ignoring/ neglecting other wards.
“The budget should be prepared jointly, but here they withdrew power of Accounts Cum Administrative Officer (ACO), because she objected to the procedure followed. This year’s budget was prepared by a person who is appointed on contract basis which is a shame and when we asked for additional budget documents we were not given proper response and hence we decided to boycott the meeting,” Salkar said.
