In what will be good news for residential societies looking for some improvement in their internal infrastructure, the Gujarat government has allowed MLAs, municipal corporators and municipality members to use their grants to contribute up to 20% of the cost of public participatory development works in private societies.At present, under the public participatory development schemes, society needs to contribute 20% of the cost of public participation work within residential societies. Such works included setting up street lights, benches, paved internal roads or common plots, water harvesting and ground waterworks. Eighty per cent of the cost of such work is borne by the civic body and the state government while the respective society has to contribute 20% under the Mukhya Mantri Shaheri Vikas Yojana. Until now, societies could seek help from local representatives including MLAs, municipal corporators and municipality members. The local representatives were allowed to contribute 10% of the total 20% of the development work cost that societies were to fund. But with the new announcement, the MLAs and municipal corporators, if they wish, can give up to 20% (essentially the entire share of the cost to be borne by residential societies) of the project cost of such participatory development work. Earlier the Vijay Rupani government had sanctioned Rs 250 crore grant for development work in newly added areas of municipal corporations and municipalities in the state.
