Sena corporators Deshpande and Madev Babar and BJP corporators Dilip Umabarkar, Ashok Yenpure and Jyotsna Sardeshpande did not come for the meeting.

Meanwhile, Nana Wadekar, city unit chief of Shiv Sena has asked that the budgetary powers be given back to the standing committee chairman with due honour or else break the Pune Pattern. “We have conveyed our discontent over this issue to Shiv Sena party executive president Uddhav Thackeray. Sena workers shunned today’s meeting, as it was not legal in the first place. We want the standing committee chairman’s budgetary powers be given back with due honour or else break up the alliance.”

Due to the absence of the Sena members, only 11 members attended the budget meeting out of the total number of 16 members of the standing committee. NCP, nevertheless, carried on with the meeting.

Bhosale, however, later told reporters that he would try and convince Sena leader in PMC and standing committee chairman Shyam Deshpande, whose powers of preparing the budget had been transferred on Tuesday. “I am going to request Deshpande not to make it an ego issue, as budget means development of the city.”

Bhosale said, “On Thursday, we started the process of making the final draft of 2009-10 budget. Though it was more of an informal meeting, we had requested all the standing committee members, including the Sena members, to attend. However, besides NCP, BJP and MNS, the Congress members were present to discuss the nitty-gritty of the budget and allocations,”