Articles by Hepzi Anthony

Public anger over potholes in Mumbai, especially during monsoons, saw most local political parties promise smooth and smart solutions along with other grand promises for Mumbaikars in the 2017 urban local body elections. But despite the umpteen electoral promises made by almost all political parties, most sections of the 2000 kms of roads under the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) continue to be plagued by potholes, before, during and after the monsoons. Now it is time for another round of promises as the February 2022 Mumbai municipal elections nears. Which party made what promises regarding roads in their 2017 manifesto?  The…

Over the past 15 years, not a single corporator has lost their seat or been disqualified because they indulged in corrupt practices during the elections. 23 corporators have lost their seats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), mostly due to submission of false caste certification. But, the BMC has failed to lodge criminal proceedings against them, and has restricted itself to just replacing them with the election runners-up.  This is not to suggest that electoral malpractices do not take place during Mumbai’s civic elections. But according to the nominated corporator on the BEST panel, Sunil Ganacharya, most charges of electoral…

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is on a mission to recover arrears of property taxes worth about Rs 20,000 crore. The BMC is auctioning articles like helicopters, cars and air conditioners, seized from a private company in 2020, to recover Rs 4.1 crores. They've sent notices and acted against 11,661 defaulters. Though the BMC always had the power to disconnect water and/or electricity connections, seal lifts and entrances of properties, they’ve rarely executed this authority. Now, owing to COVID-19, the richest municipal corporation in the country is feeling the pinch.  However, the focus has been on wealthy defaulters, and the common…

Citizens from Marol are going door-to-door with a signature campaign against the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for its failure to retrieve gardens from three hotels on the Marol-Juhu belt near Mumbai airport. The hotels were supposed to hand over the garden plots to BMC for public use. “That these three garden plots, with a cumulative measure of approximately 1.3 lakh sq ft of area, are yet to be accessible for public use, should give us a clue about how public open spaces occupied by private groups, star hotels in this case, are inaccessible in Mumbai’s highly urbanised and congested landscape,”…

The general rule for contesting in a local civic body election is that the person should be more than 21 years of age and should be a resident of Mumbai. Section 14 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888 stipulates that the contesting candidate in the BMC elections must be enrolled as a voter in the jurisdiction of Mumbai. Since 1995, when the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations and Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships (Second Amendment) Act, 1995 came into force, a corporator cannot have more than two children. Gulshan Chouhan, a corporator from South Mumbai, was disqualified in 2011…

At Citizen Matters, we review the promises made in the respective electoral manifestos by all four leading electoral parties, namely, the Shiv Sena (SS), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ahead of the BMC elections in February 2022.  We review whether these promises made by them have been delivered, and where Mumbai currently stands on these issues. To kick start the series, we look at the promises made on the issue of providing clean and safe water supply.   Water requirement in Mumbai  Mumbai currently provides 188 litres per capita per…

“The stray dog population in India is growing by the day and we need to evolve a strategy to control rabies in India,” said the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), a statutory advisory body advising the Government of India's Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, in a statement on World Rabies Day, September 28 this year. They further observed an urgent need for an effective municipal licensing of pet dogs, and better management and care practices. The Board felt that the sheer magnitude and logistics of catching, neutering, and releasing a number of stray dogs is a challenge…

On October 22nd, a fire broke out on the 19th floor of One Avighna Park, Curry Road, a 61 storey building. Arun Tiwari, a 30-year-old security guard, plunged to his death while trying to escape the fire. The incident has incited panic among residents of skyscrapers, especially those staying in the top floors. A fire brigade enquiry, conducted right after the incident, revealed that a short circuit caused the fire, and despite fire safety measures in place, slow water pressure ultimately impacted the fire fighting mechanisms in the building. Alteration work overseen by a resident on the 19th floor greatly…

With less than five months for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election in February 2022, political workers from across parties face uncertainties. It is unclear which section of the local population will be able to vote for them, causing confusion on the ground as citizens await clearance from Maharashtra’s State Election Commission. Why are constituencies being redrawn now?  Electoral constituencies or electoral wards are altered according to changes in sizes of local populations, to ensure equal representation and a fair division of geographical areas so that no political party has an advantage. “Each corporator has an average population of around…

Between April 9th and September 8th, this monsoon, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) filled 31,398 potholes in the city, measuring 1,56,910 sq.m, with 2,696 metric tonnes of bitumen cold mix. The expenditure for this was roughly Rs forty-eight crores.  However, every year, all 24 administrative wards in Mumbai are allotted only Rs two crores each for tending to potholes that emerge every monsoon. Of these, while Rs 1.5 crores is meant for preventing potholes, the rest - Rs 50 lakh - is meant for filling potholes that have become a repetitive problem in the city.  The BMC had set up…