Amarinder Bajaj To Face Lots Of Financial Troubles

He is active observing his elevation to the position of mayor at just 34, but a hard road lies in front for Amarinder Bajaj with the Patiala Municipal Corporation is not having funds to shell out salaries to its staff, leave aside seizing on expansion works.

With a mutual debt of over Rs. 100 crore pending against the civic body, which has the total twelve-monthly budget of Rs. 140 crore, the Patiala Municipal Corporation was going through grave financial load and the installments have not been paid for the last few months.

In contrast, the civic body was still to gather over Rs. 10 crore as house tax for the previous fiscal.

Notably, funds gathered from house tax is the single source of proceeds with which the civic body has to run its affairs all through the year, in addition to the share of value-added tax, which it obtains from the state administration.

Big loans taken by the civic body comprise Rs. 23 crore from HUDCO for fulfilling sewerage works, Rs. 25 crore from Patiala Improvement Trust, Rs. 14 crore for constructing roads where sewerage has been laid in recent times, Rs. 10 crore from PUDA in addition to other arrears.

A few senior functionaries in the corporation stated that the only choice left to manage the financial disaster was the sale of land accessible with the civic body.