Maharashtra govt stays MVA's Rs 600 crore tourism & culture sector plan

MUMBAI: In keeping with the current trend in the state government, the tourism and culture department, in a government resolution issued on Monday, stayed the spending of its budgetary provision of Rs 381 crore for creating basic infrastructure at tourist and cultural destinations. Additionally, Rs 215 crore meant for the MTDC has also been stayed.

While the tourism department in the MVA government was headed by Shiv Sena leader and cabinet minister Aditya Thackeray, the culture department was handled by minister of state Aditi Tatkare of the Sharad Pawar-led NCP.

The Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government has so far stayed all the administrative approvals granted for works undertaken with the District Planning and Development Council funds for the current fiscal. The tourism and culture department, too, has stayed all the works for which administrative approvals had been granted till date.

Sources said the works that had been stopped were basic infrastructure development projects such as building a retaining wall, a cloak room, a shower, etc and such things were taken up every year.

"Normally, the finance department releases 7% of the budget every month. It was decided to release funds every quarter. Thackeray and Tatkare had decided to split the budget in a 60:40 ratio and take up works suggested by MPs and MLAs from both ruling parties and the opposition. All the works recommended by elected representatives had to mandatorily come through the district collector. If the work was to do with tourism or culture, the department would allocate funds based on the recommendation of a 5-member panel following finance department norms and their own guidelines," sources said. The work would be approved only after a technical team visited the site and submitted a report. "It was a lot of effort put in by the technical team," a source said.

The Uddhaav Thackeray government had taken up the upgradation of infrastructure at various MTDC sites. Besides, the MVA government had allotted Rs 101 crore for the conservation of ancient temples, including the Adishakti Ekvira Mata Mandir in Maval, Pune district, which is the Thackeray family deity.