The five corporations of Greater Bengaluru Authority published their budget books on the 28th March 2026. While budgets are presented in councils, the lack of a council since 2020 meant that the budget files were circulated on various WhatsApp groups. None of the budget documents have been put up on the different Corporation websites, yet. You can, however, find them here.
Allocations
The West city corporation had the highest outlay of Rs. 4732 Cr followed by North City Corporation at Rs. 4341 Cr. The rest of the corporations allocated less than Rs. 4000 Cr each.
The total allocation for the GBA area was Rs. 20,216 Cr, only marginally higher than the Rs. 19,930 Cr outlay from the previous year. The budget baseline has now been established at Rs. 20,000 Cr after hovering around the Rs. 10,000 Cr mark over the previous five years.
Allocations under heads
Across all corporations “Public Works” which includes roads, storm-water drains, lakes etc takes up the bulk of the allocation followed by Solid Waste Management. Social welfare, public health, parks and education make do with paltry allocations each.
Interestingly, in East corporation, the non-existing council gets more money than the existing schools under the corporation.
For the combined GBA area, public works make up close to 60% of the allocations followed by solid-waste management at 11.4%. Education and the council get less than 1% of the total allocation. Whether one large or five smaller corporations, the budget is eventually about how much concrete to pour and where.
Brand Bengaluru
The Karnataka Government had launched “Brand Bengaluru” in 2023, where citizens were invited to provide suggestions to enhance the “brand of Bengaluru”.
Based on these suggestions, Rs. 2828 Cr was allocated to be spent over three years starting from 2024-25. We had noted in an earlier post that the bulk of the money allocated for this purpose remained unspent. Of the Rs. 1627 Cr allocated in the 2024-25 budget, the revised estimate showed that only Rs. 385 Cr, less than a quarter of the allocation, was expected to be spent.
In the current budgets, Brand Bengaluru makes its presence felt inside the budget in items like Sugama Sanchara to make commuting better and micro-surfacing which is another term for white-topping. West City corporation expects to spend the most money through Sugama Sanchara and micro-surfacing at Rs. 787 Cr.
Under Vibrant Bengaluru, Central City Corporation expects to spend Rs. 112.75 Cr to redevelop Russell Market, while North Bengaluru Corporation wants to use that money on the Climate Action Plan. None of the corporations intend to use the funds for “Clean Bengaluru” or “Education Bengaluru”.
The total allocation across the corporations amounts to Rs. 1822 Crore. It needs to be seen how much of it gets spent over the next year.
How has the money been spent?
The revised estimates for the previous year give us a closer estimate of how the money was actually spent in the previous year. Given that the corporations were formed only in October 2025, the budget books present the allocations for the last seven months of the year 2025-26 from September to March, and the revised estimates for the same.
Except in North Corporation, the utilisation was much less than the allocation. Central and West Corporations struggled to utilise even 50% of their allocation, while East and South managed to get to 65%.
This has unfortunately been the trend over the years. While the budget announcements speak of large amounts being allocated, the next year’s budget shows that the actual expenditure was much lower. As our analysis of last year’s budget showed, the softer heads like health, education and social welfare see the least utilisation.
Where is the money coming from?
To spend a total of Rs. 20,000 Cr, the corporations need to raise at least that amount. The corporation budgets together estimate raising Rs. 20,219 Crore.
The fly in this expensive ointment is that, in each of the last two years the revised estimates show that the actual incomes were only a fraction of what they expected to raise. While in 2024-25 the revised estimates were just over 50% of the total projection, in 2025-26, for the period from September 2025 to March 2026, it is 64%.
Given that the revised estimates are for the seven months in the second half of 2025-26, we have extrapolated the numbers for the entire year to compare it with the projections for 2026-27.
Across the corporations, the difference between what was estimated for 2025-26 and the projections for 2026-27 is much more than double. Only in North City Corporation the revised estimates project a collection of over Rs. 2000 Cr and they need to increase their earnings by less than double. In West and Central, the total income is expected to more than treble from the previous year revised estimates. It needs to be seen how the corporations will pull this off.
The main component of the total income that the common man experiences is the property tax. Except in Central and West corporations, the property tax collection expected is close to the revised estimates. In total, the corporations expect to raise Rs. 4378 Cr in property tax. In 2024-25 the revised estimates showed that they had raised Rs. 3815 Cr through property taxes, so it is not a long stretch to get to the projections.
The property valuation based taxation which the BBMP briefly tried to introduce has been put on hold for now, but with Boston Consulting Group suggested a similar move to BBMP in their recent report, it might make an appearance sooner rather than later.
Our budget analysis from previous years showed that there is little relation between what is allocated and how much is spent. While public works spending is usually good, softer heads like education, social welfare, and health see very little spending.
The expected income also follows similar trends where the actual income is a fraction of what they expect to raise. Given that neither the expenditure or income follow the budget allocation or projection, the budget, like our traffic signals, remains a guideline that is followed more as a suggestion.