Nearly 90% of corporators in Mumbai have performed poorly in addressing citizens’ issues and raising their questions in civic meetings, according to a report by city-based NGO Praja Foundation in the last four years. The performance rating of councilors is years. As per the report card, out of 220 councilors reviewed, only two fall in ‘A’ grade on the basis of their overall performance.
According to the report card, for the year 2017-2021, a total of 198 councilors have got C, D, E and F grades in their overall performance. The report also highlighted the need for major improvements in performance.
Ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections to be held in February 2022, grading of corporators will help citizens better understand the performance of their local representatives.
reason of coronavirus global pandemic, which affected the overall functioning of the BMC, Praja Foundation decided to publish a “consolidated report card” from 2017 to 2021 instead of a regular annual report card this year.
As for the grading of councillors, citizens’ grievances were one of the most important aspects of the issues they were expected to raise with the municipal corporation. As per the report, the corporators have failed to fulfill their primary responsibility of raising the issues of the citizens.
The report also noted that there has been no improvement in the quality of questions raised by corporators in general meetings or ward committees. Also, the attendance of corporators in general body meetings has fallen from 82% in 2017-18 to 74% in 2019-20.
According to the report, the top three corporators in terms of performance are Congress’s Ravi Raja, who also holds the post of Leader of the Opposition, Samadhan Sarvankar. Shiv Sena and from Harish Chheda Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Raja and Sarvankar are the only two corporators out of 220 who have been given ‘A’ grade. Gulnaz Qureshi from AIMIM has been ranked in the report card.
Sagar Singh from BJP and Parmeshwar Kadam from Shiv Sena as the bottom three corporators.
Party-wise, Congress councilors performed the best with a score of 57.21%, followed by Shiv Sena (55.88%) and Samajwadi Party (SP) (55.05%).
Raja said that Praja’s report acknowledged the efforts of the Congress to raise the issues of citizens. “I am grateful to him as his report highlights the efforts we have made in the last five years. The basic issues of the city need to be actively addressed by the civil administration,” said Raja.
Based on consolidated data, the overall average score of councilors in this report card is 55.10% as against 58.92% in the previous term (April 2012-March 2016). In April 2017-March 2021, out of 220 councillors, 59 are posted in ‘E’ grade, 12 in ‘F’ grade (that is, an overall score of less than 35%) and 20 in ‘B’ grade. A large number of 127 councilors have got ‘C’ and ‘D’ grades.
Nitai Mehta, Founder and Managing Trustee, Praja said, “Now that civic elections are near, we need to understand how our current elected representatives have performed in the last term and this is an opportune moment to introspect on the performance. can act as such.” foundation.
The NGO also suggested that technology should be used for effective qualitative discussions and the total number of meetings should be increased by leveraging telecom software as seen later. COVID-19.
“From October 2020 to March 2021, 26 ward committee meetings were held every month, which is higher than the annual average of the previous year (April 2019 – March 2020),” the report discovered. According to the report, the virtual meeting can help in raising more questions of the citizens.
“For efficient functioning of the committees and to be able to address the issues of citizens in a systematic and efficient manner, we have to move towards A, B, C and D grades while completely eliminating the performance of E and F grades. More councilors are needed for this,” he said. Milind Mhaske, director of Praja Foundation.
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