Mumbai: Hardworking, approachable, workaholic and the darling of political bosses — this is how colleagues and former corporators describe Iqbal Singh Chahal, Mumbai civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) longest serving administrator.
He worked as head of the country’s richest civic body for almost four years — two years as BMC commissioner and two years as its administrator.
Earlier this week, the Election Commission of India (ECI) ordered the Maharashtra government to replace Chahal and some additional/deputy municipal commissioners who have served more than three years in their present assignment and are posted in their home district.
The ECI had directed the state government to carry out the transfers in December last year. However, the state government had not complied with its orders, instead requesting the poll body to let certain bureaucrats remain as they were entrusted with crucial infrastructure projects. This time however, the ECI ordered the state government to carry out the transfers immediately.
In Chahal’s place, IAS officer Bhushan Gagrani has been appointed as the administrator of the BMC. He was serving as additional chief secretary in the CMO.
During his tenure, Chahal was celebrated for the way he handled the Covid-19 crisis. He implemented various infrastructure projects including the BMC’s most ambitious coastal road project. He also presented BMC’s largest budget — nearly Rs 60,000 crore for the current financial year — while his predecessors tried to shrink the budget size.
But Chahal’s tenure was far from rosy. Often caught in the middle because of the proxy wars between the undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP, he was constantly targeted by the Opposition.
Now he awaits his next posting.
“Yes, he has been transferred too. But he has not yet been given any posting. Soon, he will get a posting,” Deepak Kesarkar, cabinet and Mumbai guardian minister told ThePrint.
In a note to the media, Chahal expressed his “deep and sincere gratitude” to the state government for giving him the opportunity to work as BMC commissioner for almost four years. “These included a two-year fight against the Covid-19 pandemic followed by nearly two years of working as commissioner and administrator,” he said in the note. “I feel happy that I could do my bit to serve the citizens of Mumbai to the best of my ability.”
Why was I.S. Chahal important
As the BMC commissioner in 2020, under the then Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, Chahal’s first big challenge was the Covid-19 pandemic.
From setting up jumbo Covid centres quickly to managing the pandemic in the densest slums of Dharavi, Chahal, along with the then state government, was celebrated for the way they tackled the Covid crisis.
Many infrastructure projects like the coastal road, the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road, taking care of the city’s water-logging problems during the monsoon, were some of the challenges in front of him.
As part of monsoon preparation, Chahal last year even updated the disaster management system so citizens would receive weather updates on their phones via SMS alerts.
The BMC’s most ambitious project, the coastal road, saw its first phase open last week, again with Chahal overseeing most of the implementation and execution of work orders.
This includes the country’s first undersea tunnels being constructed, work on which continued through the pandemic.
During his time with the MVA government, he was seen as close to the Thackerays. But when the regime changed with Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis taking charge, the transition for Chahal was smooth.
Then, he was entrusted to take care of chief minister Shinde’s pet project — the ‘Mumbai Beautification Project’ that was launched in December 2022.
The project included concretisation of roads, painting of flyovers, beautification of beaches and traffic islands, painting of walls along major roads, LED lighting on important streets, upgradation and building of new public toilets etc.
One of the other big challenges faced by Chahal was tackling the deteriorating air pollution in the city in 2022-23.
He set up a committee to look into the matter and implemented the dust mitigation plan.
Accordingly, in the budget for FY 23-24, Chahal came up with a seven-step plan under the ‘Mumbai Clean Air Initiative’ to mitigate air pollution, which included setting up the controversial air purifiers.
Furthermore, to reduce the air pollution, BMC under Chahal pushed for a deep cleaning drive, another pet project of Shinde’s. For this, he would accompany the CM to every ward for the first two months, checking the preparations and encouraging the staff to clean the roads.
By this time, being a blue-eyed boy of the CM, Chahal held an important meeting with the members of the RWITC Mahalaxmi racecourse to convince them to transfer around 120 acres to the state government for a central park to be built.
Chahal’s former colleagues have praised him for being a hardworking person but also someone who could gel well with the ruling dispensation.
“His style was accommodative. We have seen it during Covid when he was good with then political bosses and would follow the orders in letter and spirit. And so it was always comfortable working with him for the ruling dispensation,” a former colleague of his told ThePrint.
Another colleague who is still with the BMC told ThePrint that he was the kind of boss who would give them the freedom to work and always be open to ideas.
“I take his orders but he also understood when I needed freedom to work. He would not hesitate,” the colleague said.
A source close to Shinde told ThePrint that Chahal was instrumental in taking the CM’s vision to the Mumbaikars.
“He had earned the trust of Mumbai during Covid. So him standing by the CM in every project be it the deep cleaning drive or the coastal road, sent a good signal,” the source said, adding: “Not only that, Chahal did not object to the setting up of offices of both guardian ministers of Mumbai inside the BMC, thus it not only helped citizens solve their problems, but helped us politically as well.”
The allotment of offices to Mumbai’s two guardian ministers — the Shiv Sena’s Kesarkar and BJP’s Mangal Prabhat Lodha — had become a political hot potato with opposition parties alleging that the BMC under Chahal as administrator was being partial to the ruling parties. Former corporators from the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-Shiv Sena had a space to sit and address people’s issues in the BMC headquarters at a time when no other party had an office space there.
Controversies
In 2020-2022, Chahal was at the receiving end of criticism from then opposition party BJP.
In 2020, when the BMC took a bulldozer to actress Kangana Ranaut’s office bungalow in Bandra, the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission even issued a summons to Chahal, asking him to appear before it after the Bombay High Court set aside the demolition order and directed BMC to compensate her for the damages incurred.
In 2022, Chahal was again in the BJP’s crosshairs when the BMC issued notices to BJP leader Mohit Kamboj for allegedly carrying out illegal construction in his building.
Kamboj then alleged that Chahal had properties in the United States and that he would send the files to the I-T department to investigate. Chahal dismissed those allegations as baseless.
But when the government changed, Chahal became the target of the MVA allies, especially former Mumbai guardian minister Aaditya Thackeray.
Last year, Thackeray raised concerns based on the CM’s pet projects that are being carried out in Mumbai, alleging irregularities. He sought answers from Chahal and accused him of working only on the directions of Shinde and giving benefits to contractors.
Be it road concretisation, street furniture or sanitary pad vending machines, Thackeray has alleged irregularities in the contracts for these projects by holding press conferences almost on a weekly basis. In January this year, he had even warned Chahal of action when the MVA comes to power, linking Chahal to various alleged scams.
In response to all the allegations, Chahal would send out his response in the form of statements, dismissing the claims against him as well as the BMC.
“There are many tenders in the pipeline and he is the only commissioner who is not looking at the financial condition of the corporation and blindly passing those tenders. Nobody will bend so much,” said an ex-corporator from the Opposition.
Another corporator from the Opposition camp raised similar concerns.
“Today the budget calculations have all gone for a toss. It is so bad that in the next 2-3 years, we might struggle to pay the salaries of the employees. There is no financial audit anywhere. This is nothing but loot under Chahal,” he said.
The latest on the list of controversies is the Gokhale bridge-flyover misalignment, for which the BMC received a lot of flak. Aaditya Thackeray even demanded that Chahal be suspended. However, additional municipal commissioner P Velrasu bit that bullet.
A former colleague of Chahal’s, quoted above, said, “One has to know how to work with him. He is not really easy-going. Sometimes he would put a job on you and if it goes wrong, then you become solely responsible.”
From OSD under UPA to BMC chief
Chahal is a 1989-batch IAS officer. In an earlier conversation with ThePrint’s Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, he had said that he cracked the IAS exam in 1989 when he was less than 22 years old — making him one of the youngest to clear the prestigious exam.
Before becoming BMC commissioner, he had served in the Union government. In the UPA government, Chahal served as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) and joint secretary in the home ministry and was known to be close to former minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.
After 2014, when the Modi government came to power, he was deputed to the Ministry for Women and Child Development (WCD) in 2015, a stint during which he was put on compulsory leave after an alleged “difference of opinion” with then WCD minister Maneka Gandhi.
In 2016, he was “compelled” to leave the central government, and was prematurely repatriated to the Maharashtra cadre, his home ground, three years before his central deputation was supposed to end.
However, in the state government, Chahal served in important departments such as water resources and urban development before he was appointed as the BMC commissioner.
He was appointed BMC chief in May 2020 after then CM Uddhav Thackeray dropped a senior IAS Praveen Pardeshi — who was seen as close to Fadnavis — as municipal commissioner over alleged mishandling of the Covid crisis in its early months.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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