The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST) presented its budget on the first day of the two-day budget discussion with a mere Rs 1 lakh as estimated profit for the year 2016-17. This despite the fact that the undertaking has increased ticket fares twice this year, and issued increase in electricity charges causing Mumbaikars to pay nearly four times their normal power bills.
BEST has stated in the budget document presented to the committee and the media that with an estimated income of Rs 6641.52 crore and estimated expenditure of Rs 6641.51 crore, only Rs 1 lakh will be left in the undertaking’s kitty.
Questioning if the budget was well thought out, committee members were furious that BEST was still asking for charity from its parent organisation, the BMC. Page 1 to 2 of the budget document said that the surplus of '1 lakh was “due to grant from MCGM expected to be received”. It was suggested that the municipal corporation consider the undertaking’s request to provide a grant of Rs 355.36 crore or actual deficit, whichever was higher, in the financial year 2016-17 as done in the earlier year.
Committee members like Kedar Hombalkar said, “This conditional surplus is mentioned in passing, so basically it means that if the BMC does not give us money which is highly likely as they have been saying that they have lost revenue due to Local Body Tax (LBT), we will go into the negative once again. This seems illogical since we have hiked transport fares, electricity rates and will be implementing property tax via the BMC by March.”
Other committee members like Ranjan Choudhary said the BEST has to look towards other modes of revenue and save money when allotting contracts to blacklisted people. “There are contracts given to people who did not provide the services they had been given money for and we are giving the same people the contracts again. We have to save money in every place possible,” he said.
This is the first budget proposed by General Manager Jagdish Patil who took over the undertaking on January 6 this year and has been trying to increase revenue by marketing air-conditioned buses to private companies and experimenting with dedicated bus lanes a few months ago.
The BEST has also lost almost three lakh passengers when hikes were implemented in February and April, bringing down overall passengers to 27 lakh from the earlier 30 lakh.
