Tongue-tied in House,14 corporators had nothing to ask

Ninety-three of the 227 corporators in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation have asked a maximum of only five questions in various BMC ward and general body meetings in the last financial year. Data accessed through RTI applications by the Praja Foundation has also revealed that 14 of these corporators have not asked even a single question in various meetings between April 2010 and March 2011. Moreover,only 26 per cent of the total questions asked have been related to issues and complaints that citizens have raised in their respective wards during this period.

These findings were revealed by the NGO while presenting the ‘Report Card’ of BMC corporators based on factors such as education qualification,possession of PAN card,criminal cases registered against him/her,sessions and meetings attended,number of questions asked,utilisation of local area development funds,and perception of public services,corruption index and accessibility by means of survey of more than 22,000 people across the city.

However,attendance statistics are not too grim with 33 per cent of corporators having attended more than 80 per cent of the meetings and only seven per cent corporators with records of less than 35 per cent attendance. However,only 44 out of 227 corporators have asked more than 15 questions in all these meetings over one year. Despite faring badly in the parameter of educational qualification,female corporators have more average marks (60.06 per cent) as compared to the average of male corporators (58.77 per cent).

Story continues below this ad

Educational qualifications of corporators also do not present an encouraging picture with a total of 58 coprorators not having cleared even the Class X and 78 corporators having just SSC qualification. Thirty-three corporators have the HSC qualification while 36 hold degrees and only 15 hold double degrees,as per the data.

Based on the report card,the majority of the high scorers on the basis of the overall performance have been from BJP,followed by NCP,Congress,Shiv Sena and then MNS and Samajwadi Party.