BMC Elections 2022: Maharashtra Government introduced a measure to reduce BMC wards and other corporations proportionally to their populations

The Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act and The Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act will be amended by the Shinde Fadnavis administration on Wednesday to update the number of wards. The number of wards in the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will drop from 236 to 227 under the proposed revisions to the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act. The number of wards shall be commensurate to the population of the individual civic bodies under the revisions the government has proposed to the Maharashtra Municipal Corporations Act.

 

The state cabinet reversed the Maha Vikas Aghadi administration's decision to increase the number of BMC wards from 227 to 236 on August 3, citing a 3.8 percent expansion of the civic body's authority and rapidly expanding urbanisation. The government determined that the 2017 ward system would be used for the upcoming BMC elections, which are anticipated to take place in October or November.

 

In light of the government's proposed action, these civic authorities will conduct a new exercise in ward delimitation, ward reservation, and voter list updating. An increase in the number of wards from 227 to 236 was agreed upon by the MVA cabinet on November 10 of last year in an effort to offer the elected representatives more representation. The previous administration had stated that the 227 corporators were chosen in accordance with the 2001 census and that the number of wards had not been altered following the 2011 census. The Shiv Sena strongholds of Mumbai City 3, Mumbai Eastern Suburbs 3, and Mumbai Western Suburbs 3 saw the most growth of the nine wards.

 

But according to a bill from the government, "The number of councillors in the BMC and the minimum and the maximum number of elected councillors of other Municipal Corporations had been increased considering growth in urban population and the speed of urbanisation, based on figures from the Census of 2011 and hypothetical population calculations in 2021-22, respectively. However, it was deemed necessary to define the number of councillors for companies based on the population as of the completed Census 2021.