Mumbai Civic Body Grants Development Funds Only to BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde) MLAs: Report
The Wire Staff
Real journalism holds power accountable
Since 2015, The Wire has done just that.
But we can continue only with your support.
New Delhi: The Mumbai civic body has not granted a single opposition lawmaker funds they requested for municipal work, an investigation by Indian Express has revealed. In comparison, all lawmakers of the ruling alliance got the funds they had asked for – a cumulative amount of Rs 500 crore.
Twenty-one of Mumbai's 36 MLAs are from the ruling alliance of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde's faction of the Shiv Sena party. All 21 MLAs sought and got funds till December 2023, a Right to Information (RTI) reply shows.
None of the 15 opposition MLAs – from Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena faction and the Congress – got any such amount, although 11 of them had asked for funds. The MLAs had cited that they would repair a drain in Dharavi, beautify a park in Sewri and so on.
A February 2023 policy allows MLAs to seek funds from the civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The BMC is one of the world's richest municipal bodies and has been without an elected leadership for two years now. In such a scenario, this policy allows MLAs to undertake work ordinarily done by elected corporators.
BMC commissioner I.S. Chahal did not speak to the paper on the matter.
The BMC had set aside Rs 1,260 crore – which Express identifies as around 2.5% of the Rs 52,619-crore BMC budget – for work in the constituencies of the 36 MLAs.
Each MLA, thus, would be entitled to Rs 35 crore.
However, as the RTI response essays, only the ruling alliance MLAs have received this money.
This article went live on January thirty-first, two thousand twenty four, at thirty minutes past two in the afternoon.The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.