Only two Mumbai corporators’ report cards say A grade

NGO Praja Foundation's annual report that ranks corporators based on performance in BMC, finds over 99 per cent have not prioritised citizens’ issues

Only two Mumbai corporators’ report cards say A grade

Congress corporator Ravi Raja and (right) Samadhan Sadanand Sarvankar of the Shiv Sena received ‘A’ grade

With the civic elections around the corner, the NGO Praja Foundation’s recent annual report has rated the Mumbai’s corporators’ performances in the past four years. But to the dismay of the city, only 2 of the 220 corporators fall in ‘A’ grade — the ranking given by the NGO based on their overall performance. Unfortunately for Mumbai, 99.55 per cent of the corporators have not prioritised citizens’ complaints and issues when asking questions in the BMC, and thus have received ‘E’ and ‘F’ grades in the Financial Years 2017-18 to 2020-21. To add to this, when it comes to quality of questions, none of the corporators achieved an A Grade in the past four years.
At least 90 per cent of the total councillors (198) have received C, D, E & F grades in the overall performance for FY 2017-2021, showing the need for major improvements in performance. Citizens’ complaints are one of the most important aspects of a councillor’s responsibilities. According to the report the corporators have failed to fulfil this primary responsibility of raising citizen issues.

“Now that the BMC elections are around the corner, we need to understand how our current elected representatives have performed in the last term and this is an opportune moment to inspect the performances," said Nitai Mehta, founder and managing trustee, Praja Foundation.

No questions raised

According to the report, Gulnaz Salim Qureshi of AIMIM party and the H East ward corporator, has not raised a single question for the period 2017-18 to 2020-21. Additionally, during the period of the pandemic, from April 2020 - March 2021, 30 councillors did not ask a single question in the various meetings held. At least over 50 per cent (115) of the councillors have asked, on an average, 17 questions per year from 2017-18 to 2020-21.

Looking at the consolidated data, the overall average score of councillors in this report card is 55.10 per cent , while in the last term (April 2012-March 2016) the average was 58.92 per cent . In April 2017-March 2021, out of 220 councillors, 59 were positioned in ‘E’ grade and 12 corporators were positioned in ‘F’ grade (which is an overall score of below 35 per cent ), while only 2 were graded ‘A’ and 20 received a ‘B’ grading. A large majority of 127 councillors received ‘C’ and ‘D’ grades.

The top three rankers for the 2021 report card are Ravi Raja, Congress corporator who has been ranked number one with 81.12 per cent score and is in A grade, followed by Samadhan Sadanand Sarvankar of the Shiv Sena who is ranked number two with a score of 80.42 per cent in A grade. Harish Ravji Chheda of the BJP ranked 3 with B grade and scored 77.81 per cent . Party wise, the average scores of INC councillors’ performance was the highest in 2017-2021 (57.21 per cent ) followed by Shiv Sena (55.88 per cent ) and Samajwadi Party (55.05 per cent ).

No. of meetings increase

The number of meetings can vastly be improved by leveraging technological platforms for better discussions and inclusive decision making, said Praja Foundation members. From April 2017 to March 2020, an average of 24 ward committee meetings were conducted every month. On the other hand, in October- December, 2020, when the ward committees started meeting online, the average number of meetings increased to 28 a month. Additionally, the administration also needs to work in sync with corporators for effective deliberation and problem resolution, members of the Foundation said.

“For efficient running of the committees and to address citizens’ issues in a systematic and efficient manner, we need more councillors to transition to A, B, C and D grades while completely eliminating E and F grades of performances,” said Milind Mhaske, director of Praja Foundation.

The criteria

The Praja Foundation took the following information through RTI to judge the performances of the corporators: attendance in the corporation and the committee meetings, the number of questions (issues) she/he raised in the above fora, importance of those questions, and utilisation of funds allotted to her/him. Some parameters on her/his background such as educational qualifications, income tax records and criminal records