Soon, BJP corporator Joshi also delivered a fiery address giving an 'ultimatum' to the Municipal Commissioner to "ascertain the liability of the officers concerned" by the next general board meeting and threatened to join the Congress corporators on the floor.
Vadodara: The budget booklet of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) sparked a major debate regarding Covid-19 data. In the booklet, to highlight the work done by the fire department it has been stated that 1,600 calls of Covid-19 body disposals were handled by the department a figure much higher than the official data.
The same booklet, however, while mentioning work done by the health department states that 236 persons had died due to Covid-19 including 99 Covid deaths and 137 non-Covid deaths. The figures of both departments are part of the draft of the commissioner’s statement on the budget.
The VMC budget was presented on March 15 and the budget speech, as well as other material, is typically prepared a few days in advance and usually finalised on the budget eve. On March 31, the death toll as per official figures had climbed up to 250. This was still much lesser than the figures of bodies handled by the fire department as per the budget.