In Mumbai, the country’s financial capital, with the civic elections on hold for two years now, the quality of infrastructure in your neighbourhood could very well depend on which party your MLA is from. For, the purse-strings are opened when the MLA is from the ruling party and closed when they are from the Opposition, an investigation by The Indian Express has revealed.
Mumbai has 36 MLAs: 21 of the ruling BJP-Shinde Shiv Sena alliance, and 15 of the Opposition. Under a February 2023 policy that allows MLAs to seek funds from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for civic works, each of the 21 ruling alliance MLAs sought, and got, funds till December 2023, show official records obtained under the Right to Information Act and investigated by The Indian Express.
In stark contrast, not one of the 15 Opposition MLAs (of the Uddhav Bal Thackeray Shiv Sena and Congress) got any money even though as many as 11 of them had asked for funds. The Indian Express spoke to each of the 15 Opposition MLAs to independently verify if they applied for funds, and if the Guardian Ministers approved it.
The money, if sanctioned, would have been used for various development works – from the repair of a drain in Dharavi to the beautification of a park in Sewri to the installation of paver blocks in Satyanarayan Chawl.
Despite repeated attempts, BMC Commissioner IS Chahal was not available for comment.
These are works that the 227 elected BMC corporators would have ordinarily undertaken. But with the country’s richest civic body functioning without an elected body for close to two years now, on February 16, 2023, days after the Budget was presented on February 4, the BMC passed a resolution saying funds to run the city would be routed through Mumbai’s 36 MLAs.
The approval note that followed the February 2023 resolution said, “A large number of letters have been received from MLAs/MPs for providing funds for various development works, infrastructural works, beautification work etc within their respective constituencies. Therefore, an approval was given for this new provision by the administrator on February 16, 2023.”
As per this provision, the civic body set aside Rs 1,260 crore – around 2.5 per cent of the Rs 52,619 crore BMC budget – for civic works to be carried out in the constituencies of the 36 MLAs. Each MLA was entitled to seek a maximum of Rs 35 crore.
However, in the 10 months between February 2023 and December 31, 2023, Municipal Commissioner and Administrator I S Chahal disbursed Rs 500.58 crore, all to 21 MLAs belonging to the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, while the Opposition MLAs drew a blank.
Also read in Marathi | Gujarati | Hindi | Malayalam | Tamil | Bangla
The process and how it was selective
The region that falls under the BMC’s jurisdiction has 36 MLAs in the current Maharashtra Assembly, of which 15 belong to the BJP, six of the Eknath Shinde-Shiv Sena, nine of the UBT Shiv Sena, four of the Congress and one each of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Samajwadi Party (SP).
Under the BMC’s special policy, Guardian Ministers are authorised to clear proposals from MLAs seeking funds for development work in their constituencies, and forward the cleared proposals to the BMC, which would then disburse the funds. Until this policy came into place, there was no provision for legislators to withdraw money from the civic body’s corpus.
Following the BMC resolution, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the two Guardian Ministers of Mumbai – Mangal Prabhat Lodha (Mumbai Suburbs — 26 Assembly seats) and Deepak Kesarkar (Mumbai City — 10 Assembly seats) – began clearing requests made by MLAs for funds. Following the approval of the CM and the Ministers, the BMC started disbursing the funds.
Maharashtra has Guardian Ministers for each district who oversee planning and development of the district.
Documents accessed by The Indian Express show that in 11 cases, fund requests from Opposition MLAs to Guardian Ministers were yet to be cleared and forwarded to the BMC. Letters written by Opposition MLAs reveal that in some cases, the requests for funds were sent to the ministers as early as March 2023.
On the other hand, records show, requests from MLAs belonging to the BJP and Shiv Sena were cleared by the Chief Minister and the two Guardian Ministers, with some being forwarded to the BMC in a little over a week. Four MLAs – three Sena and one BJP – wrote directly to the Chief Minister, while the others wrote to the Guardian Ministers.
And when it came to his own constituency, Guardian Minister Lodha went directly to the BMC and got funds. On June 23, 2023, Lodha, the BJP MLA from Malabar Hill, sent a letter to Chahal seeking Rs 30 crore. In less than a week, on June 28, the civic body cleared an initial disbursement of Rs 24 crore (80 per cent of funds sought).
The 21 ruling MLAs favoured
Among the other cases where members of the ruling alliance sought and got funds include:
◾ On May 11, 2023, BJP’s Mulund MLA, Mihir Kotecha, wrote to Guardian Minister Lodha seeking Rs 26.34 crore for carrying out civic works. On May 22, Lodha wrote to Administrator Chahal directing him to immediately disburse Rs 26 crore to the MLA. The BMC approved the funds, saying the remaining 20 per cent would be given once the work began.
◾ On May 9, Atul Bhatkhalkar, BJP’s Kandivali MLA, wrote to CM Shinde, Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and minister Lodha, seeking Rs 24.27 crore. On May 26, Lodha wrote to Chahal and asked him to immediately make the funds available. On June 2, the BMC wrote to the local ward office, giving a go-ahead for the fund.
◾ On July 18, Sena’s Dadar MLA Sada Sarvankar wrote to minister Kesarkar seeking Rs 35 crore. On August 7, the BMC approved Rs 28 crore and said the remaining amount would be sent in due time.
◾ On July 18, Kesarkar cleared a proposal by Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar, seeking Rs 35.85 crore. The BMC approved the transfer of Rs 28 crore on August 7.
◾ The RTI documents showed that minister Kesarkar cleared the proposals almost the same day MLAs wrote to him.
Opposition MLAs, meanwhile, continue to wait
Over the past two months, The Indian Express reached out to each of the 15 Opposition MLAs; 11 confirmed they had written to the Guardian Minister seeking funds from the BMC, but haven’t received thus far.
Of the remaining four MLAs, the sole NCP MLA, Nawab Malik, was in jail in a case of money laundering and released on bail on medical grounds. The other three – UBT Sena’s Aditya Thackeray, Prakash Phaterpekar and Rutuja Latke – haven’t written to the Guardian Ministers seeking funds.
◾ On June 23 last year, Ravindra Waikar, Sena UBT legislator from Jogeshwari, wrote to Lodha seeking Rs 16 crore, citing a slew of civic infrastructure works such as road widening and nullah repair that needed to be carried out in his constituency. On August 26, Waikar wrote to CM Shinde complaining that he was yet to receive the funds from the civic body. He wrote that despite writing to minister Lodha, “not a Rupee has been allotted” to his constituency, while “15 MLAs of the ruling alliance have received the funds in their ward offices”. The same day, in a separate letter to Chahal, he reminded the Administrator about his request for funds and mentioned that the lack of funds have led to deterioration of the existing civic infrastructure in his ward.
◾ On February 26, Sena UBT MLA from Sewri, Ajay Chaudhuri, wrote to Kesarkar seeking Rs 68.75 crore for a slew of infrastructure works that had to be taken up in 62 municipal beats of the constituency. However, Kesarkar’s office is yet to clear the proposal.
◾ Dharavi MLA and Congress’s Mumbai chief Varsha Gaikwad wrote to Kesarkar in March 2023 seeking Rs 26.51 crore. However, the BMC is yet to disburse the fund.
◾ Samajwadi Party’s Bhiwandi MLA Rais Shaikh wrote to Chahal and CM Shinde on August 3, 2023, seeking Rs 4.6 crore for civic works in Byculla, of which he was corporator until March 2022. However, Shaikh is yet to receive the funds.
No pending requests: Guardian Minister
When The Indian Express reached out to Guardian Minister Lodha on January 9, he maintained that funds will be disbursed to every MLA “irrespective of the party he/she belongs to”.
“At present, I don’t have any pending letters in my possession from the Opposition MLAs. We are disbursing the funds in a liberal manner by assessing the merit of the proposals, which we are receiving and there is no favouritism being done towards anybody,” Lodha said.
Waikar, the UBT Sena MLA, however, told The Indian Express, “Almost every MLA from our party has written to the Guardian Ministers seeking funds for their constituencies. However, we are yet to get the funds and it has been more than six-seven months since we wrote those letters. Surprisingly, those from the ruling side are getting approval for their funds within weeks of sending their letters. When we check with BMC officials, they say that unless the Guardian Ministers approve the request, we can’t disburse the money. This is sheer abuse of power and public money.”
Congress’s Varsha Gaikwad said, “I had written letters to Deepak Kesarkar between February and March last year, seeking BMC’s funds for my constituency, Dharavi, for carrying out basic civic works. But till date, I am yet to receive a single rupee. Dharavi lacks basic necessities and it has been more than a year since civic works were carried out here.”
SP’s Abu Azmi said, “Besides writing letters, I met with Guardian Minister Lodha and requested him to give us the funds. Every time he meets me he says that I will get the funds, but in reality we are still waiting for the money.”
The civic body’s process to approve disbursal of funds to MLAs for development work in their areas raises two critical issues. One, if Guardian Ministers of ruling alliance do not clear proposals by Opposition MLAs, then the upgrade of civic infrastructure in key areas like Dharavi (Congress MLA Varsha Gaikwad) or Jogeshwari (Shiv Sena Uddhav B Thackeray MLA Ravindra Waikar) suffers. Two, at a time when political lines are blurred in the state with both Shiv Sena and NCP witnessing a split, and nearly 80 MLAs switching sides over the last 18 months, there exists the possibility of the ruling alliance dangling the carrot of funds to lure legislators towards its side.
