No report card to assess performance, how ruling, Opp parties plan to pick candidates for BMC polls

This move left no room for political presence or public representation in the Mumbai civic body for almost four years now.

At the political front, Maharashtra has witnessed a series of political dramas with both the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) witnessing a vertical split in their respective parties. Therefore, the upcoming civic poll in Mumbai — likely to be held in early 2026 — is going to be a battle for prestige and existence for parties belonging both from the ruling and the opposing sides in the state.

While the BJP is looking forward to making in-roads into the largest civic body by being the larger party for the first time, the upcoming elections will also be a battle for survival for the Sena UBT.

However, the major challenge in front of the heads of all the key political parties is the criterion on the basis of which candidates will be selected for the upcoming civic polls.

‘Public service above anything else’

Leaders from the BJP which will be contesting the civic polls with Shiv Sena as part of its Mahayuti alliance states that it will be eyeing to win at least 150 out of the 227 seats in the civic polls.

BJP’s Mumbai president and Andheri (West) MLA Ameet Satam told The Indian Express that candidates will be given tickets from his party only on the basis of how they continued to stay with the people even after vacating their offices in 2022.

“Being a public representative is a full time job, irrespective of the fact that whether your post is active or dissolved. There are many people who were hardly present with the people after their tenure was over. Such candidates will not get any preference. We are assessing the performances of each and every corporator who vacated their office in 2022 and looking closely at how they have continued to stay in touch with the people even after their position got dissolved,” Satam said.

Besides addressing civic grievances, the job of a corporator includes chairing and attending several statutory body meetings in the BMC like the standing committee, improvements committee and education committee.

Usually the attendance of the corporators in these committees along with the proposals addressed and grievances solved are assessed by the party supremos to quantify their performance throughout a particular tenure.

Satam said their accessibility will also be assessed considering there is no immediate report card available to ascertain their performance in the past three years.

“One of the key aspects of our assessment is going to be how each representative extended their support to the citizens during the pandemic outbreak. How they helped out people in getting hospital admissions, how they helped migrant labourers or organised vaccination drives,” Satam added.

Senior leaders of Sena UBT are also following a similar route for selecting the candidate.

Sena UBT leader, Kishori Pednekar who was also Mumbai’s Mayor between November 2019 and March 2022, said that in a civic election it is only the candidate’s reputation of standing with their people that matters.

“In a civic election a candidate wins or loses an election majorly on the basis of their accessibility. Since the issues on the basis of which the local elections are fought are hyper local therefore it is a thumb rule that the corporators will always have to be accessible round the clock and he or she is never out of duty,” Pednekar told The Indian Express.

“Often we get calls from people at midnight asking for help with issues like hospital admission and blood donation. In these situations we respond to people immediately. Therefore, while selecting a candidate certain factors will be thoroughly checked as in how they were helping the people. We will verify their claims with the local Shiv Sena Shakha Pramukhs to ensure candidates are elected strictly on the basis of their merit,” Pednekar stated.

For Congress, which served as the major Opposition party in the previous term, selecting the right candidate has more to do with their on-ground connect.

“In a civic election, the connection with the local citizens matters the most. People remember who was there with them in terms of trial. That is why having a strong public presence is important for us when it comes to selecting a candidate,” Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said.

‘Despite challenges, we never stopped working’

Meanwhile, several former corporators stated that even after their term ended in 2022, they never stopped working.

When the term of the elected representatives ended on March 7, 2022, out of the 227 total corporators in the BMC, 88 were from the Shiv Sena (undivided), 80 from the BJP, Congress 31, NCP 9, MNS 7, AIMIM 2, Samajwadi Party 6.

“Even though we were out of office, for the people in our constituencies, we were still their corporators. The challenges for us were that we didn’t have any logistical support like access to funds, letterheads or our offices in BMC, yet we continued to address and resolve the basic civic issues,” former BJP corporator Vinod Mishra said.

“During the last three years, our work primarily included escalating civic issues related to road works, sewage works and hydraulic services with local MLAs and bureaucrats and having them resolved. Since, we didn’t have any access to funds, our job was to streamline these issues by arranging meetings between citizens and bureaucrats and later getting them solved by the local ward offices or by using the funds from the local MLA,” former corporator from Colaba Makarand Narwekar told The Indian Express.

Asif Zakaria, who has served as the Congress corporator from Bandra since 2005, said that often MLAs from the ruling party wouldn’t release funds for carrying out work in wards whose last elected corporator belonged to the Opposition parties.

“There have been many instances when a former corporator belonging to the Opposition party had proposed certain works for the area to the BMC, but the entire work was carried out under the name of the ruling BJP or Sena MLA. By this way, it gets difficult for any politician to keep their flock together, because by staying out of office for a longer period of time, it becomes difficult for someone to maintain relevance, because at the end of the day, it’s the people who want results. During such a situation we work relentlessly,” Zakaria added.

Meanwhile, following the vertical split in the Shiv Sena and NCP parties, several former corporators switched from NCP and Congress to the ruling BJP and Sena side.

Former Shiv Sena (undivided) corporator who is now part of Sena UBT said that till now more than 70 former corporators have switched to the Eknath Shinde-led Sena from Sena UBT.

“There have been many instances when we shelled out money from our own pockets to resolve civic issues raised by citizens. Till date, people come to our shakhas with their issues and we continue to address them in a holistic manner and keep the party high command updated with our daily activities. Even though many of our former corporators have switched sides, this is not going to make much of a difference in the elections as people know who stands beside them during testing times,” Padwal said.