The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), in its 150-year-old history, for the first time has spent 18 months under an administration’s rule and without electing representatives.
Moreover, 24 out of 28 Municipal Corporations in the state do not have an elected body of public representatives and are being handled by state-appointed administrators.
For the first time in the state's history, almost every civic body is operating without municipal corporators. A corporator in a civic body builds a bridge between citizens and the administration. At the ward level, the corporator is in charge of working with the civic body to plan and carry out a variety of civic works, such as road building and repairs, pothole filling, sewage work, public health, sanitation, and water supply.
A municipal body's standing committee, law committee, health committee, education committee, improvements committee, works committee, and tree committee are just a few of the statutory committees that the elected corporators are induced into. These committees are essential in helping the civic administration formulate new policies and approve proposals and resolutions pertaining to urban development and infrastructure construction.
Since the civic body is operated by government employees and bureaucrats under an administrator's jurisdiction when the corporators' term ended, so did their authority. However, people still come to the former corporators to voice their concerns about a variety of civic-related topics.
While the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Elections are scheduled to take place next year, there is no sight of Municipal Elections in the near future. Some officials from BMC are claiming that the current top-down approach is costing more manpower and time.
In the meantime, ex-corporators from all political parties claim that the lack of local representatives causes a lack of coordination, a failure to address local issues, and a delay in construction projects.
Five of the 24 municipal bodies, including Kolhapur, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan Dombivali, Navi Mumbai, and Aurangabad, have been under administrator's rule since 2020. Other 18 municipal corporations, including the BMC, Asia's biggest civic body, were placed under administrator's rule in 2022.
Additionally, the BMC has only had one administrator in charge of it twice since its founding in 1873. Previously, between March 1984 and April 1985, the BMC was subject to an administrator's authority under the previous Congress administration. The new council of elected representatives took the oath in May 1985 when elections were held later.
Apart from BMC, the civic bodies of the following cities went under the administrator’s rule in 2022: Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Latur, Bhiwandi, Malegaon, Panvel, Mira-Bhayander and Nanded.
Moreover, the Sangli Miraj Kupwad Corporation became the most recent one to be placed under administrator's rule in August 2023, and the terms of corporators in the municipal bodies of Jalgaon, Ahmednagar, and Dhule would end by the end of this year.
Due to the Supreme Court's (SC) decision to eliminate the Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota from local body elections, the civic elections could not be held on time, and the five-year term of municipal corporators commenced to dissolve from the beginning of April 2020. Elections in Mumbai were hampered by a separate issue related to the redrawing of municipal ward borders.
The then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government selected the current municipal commissioners as the state-assigned administrators for staffing the civic body in 21 corporations, whose term of elected members expired between April 2020 and July 2021, after the elections were postponed.
The administrators for the corporations whose term of corporators expired between October 2022 and August 2023 are chosen by the present Shinde-Fadnavis government. BMC's jurisdiction is divided into 24 municipal wards, each of which is represented by 227 elected municipal corporators.
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