With just a day left for the expiry of deadline for submitting the proposals in Participatory Budget initiative, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has urged residents to make use of the online facility for submitting proposal for the development of their region.
“The new PB+ web application was launched on August 26. The platform seeks to increase the level of public participation in Pune’s participatory budgeting process. The PB+ platform will serve as an empowering digital mechanism through which citizens can recommend useful and impactful civic works in their respective wards or prabhags,” said a civic officer.
Pune is the only city in India to have a formal mechanism for Participatory Budgeting, with the PMC setting aside a certain portion of its budget for projects recommended by citizens. The new PB+ platform digitises this process which was hitherto primarily conducted through an offline mechanism, he said. The new platform is being created by fellows of the India Smart Cities Fellowship Programme under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. This team is working in collaboration with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Pune Smart Cities Development Corporation Limited (PSCDCL) to develop the new platform. The team has actively engaged with multiple stakeholders.
This year, the PMC is currently receiving citizen inputs from the August 1 to September 1. The new online platform will therefore be particularly useful for citizens to provide their project suggestions through the convenience of the online route.
Citizens will first have to register on the PB+ platform by providing their name, mobile number, and address. Upon logging into the platform, citizens can read the necessary guidelines to make an effective project suggestion. The PB+ platform will provide citizens with the option to suggest projects across the following six sectors – road, electricity, water supply, bhawan, slum, sewerage and sanitation. Once submitted, the citizen suggestions will be shortlisted by the prabhag committees in the ward offices based on their feasibility, priority, and necessity. It is hoped that large numbers of citizens will utilise this new platform to put forth their suggestions for their respective wards and prabhags.
