Six Congress women corporators were suspended today by Mumbai mayor Snehal Ambekar for a day, for creating ruckus in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) house over allocation of budgetary funds.
Corporators who were given suspension orders are Sheetal Mhatre, Waqarunnisa Ansari, Ajanta Yadav, Parul Mehta, Nayana Seth and Anita Yadav.
A complete pandemonium ensued in the House as Congress corporators jumped on seats, tore house documents and threw them all over.
Congress corporators also shouted slogans against the mayor and ruling Shiv Sena party.
On February 4, Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte had presented Rs 33,514 budget for the year 2015-16.
Later, on February 25, Kunte proposed an additional Rs 400 crore as aid to BEST over the Rs 100 crore alloted in the budget acting upon standing committee members' suggestions.
The issue cropped up in the House today.
Congress corporators started shouted slogans as soon as the standing committee chairman Yashodhar Phanse started his budget speech.
After ruckus continued despite repeated pleas to cease the chaos, Ambedkar suspended the six corporators and adjourned the House on the issue.
According to Congress corporators, Shiv Sena has been partial in allocation of funds. Out of Rs 400 crore, 227 corporators were given Rs 1 crore each.
Out of the remaining Rs 173 crore, Shiv Sena corporators got Rs 120 crore and the BJP got Rs 32 crore. The opposition parties, Congress (Rs 7 crore), the MNS and the SP (Rs 5 crore each) were given a very miniscule share.
Opposition leader Devendra Amberkar said, "This is an injustice to people who are having corporators from opposition parties. The development works in their wards would suffer as the opposition parties have been given minimum funds. There should have been equal distribution of funds. We will move the court against this".
Refuting allegations, house leader and Sena corporator Trishna Vishwasrao said, "When proposals of additional funds were passed in the standing committee, they kept mum and now they are trying to play politics about it".
