A day after civic officials presented to the civic Standing Committee budget estimates for 2008-09 with outlays totalling Rs 16,792 crore, officials admitted that while in the process of making budgetary allocations, a proposal for a budget that would reflect citizens’ needs was placed before the leaders of different political parties. That was three months ago. According to the BMC’s finance department, the leaders of all political parties turned down the proposal, fearing that giving citizens a direct say in budget-making would dilute their own powers.

So, once again, the budget that will be finalised in March will remain a document prepared by bureaucrats and civic officials with alternations and additions made by corporators.

“Politicians act according to their votebank and notebank,” said Adolf D’Souza, independent corporator from Juhu, the city’s first ‘People’s candidate” voted to power with a huge margin in February last year. “It is not that corporators do not know the issues in their areas. But people should be allowed to dictate the terms in the budget,’’ said D’Souza, who believes that if corporators really have the political will, they can make the budget truly representative of what people in their localities want.

“We may not be experts but we had dissected last year’s budget through a series of meetings with our corporator. Together we had prepared a list of what we want for our ward and forwarded it to the ward officer so that it could be incorporated in the budget. But everything has remained only on paper,’’ said Citispace activist Vidya Vaidya who is also part of the H-West (Bandra-Santacruz) Citizens Trust, whose list of suggestions included cleaning of beaches at Chimbai and Khar Danda and tempo-sized garbage vehicles to ferry garbage out of Bandra’s gaothans.

The idea of people’s participation in the budgetary process, which is in force in the Bangalore municipality, was to be put into practice in BMC as early as 2004. Year after year, the BMC administration has been throwing up its hands on the matter, stating that such a reform is not possible unless corporators approve it.

“If the BMC is really serious, then who is stopping them from holding zonal level meetings where people can voice their needs before the budget is prepared. The commissioner has the discretion to adopt every measure to make the budget citizen-friendly,” said Ashish Shelar, BJP corporator from Khar.

When contacted municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak refused to comment. “I will comment on this later,” was all he would say.