Mumbai: As many as 11 of 25 administrative wards of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been functioning without a full-time assistant commissioner, also known as ward officer, for the last two years.
Assistant commissioners are to wards what a collector is to districts.
The responsibility of filling up the posts lies with the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC), that comes under the general administration department of the state government.
The vacant positions are in wards A (Colaba), B (Dongri), C (Mumbadevi), E (Byculla), P-South (Goregaon), R-south (Kandivali), R-North (Dahisar), L (Kurla), S (Bhandup), T (Mulund) and the newly carved P-East (Malad East).
“As of now, executive engineers have been filling up the posts of assistant commissioners in these wards,” a BMC ward officer who did not wish to be named told ThePrint.
“These engineers are temporary appointees and haven’t sat for the MPSC exams like us, so that impacts the functioning of the wards,” he added.
According to the ward officer, five other posts that are to be filled by the MPSC are lying vacant in various departments — one each in planning, stormwater management and market departments, and two in the encroachment department.
ThePrint reached BMC commissioner Iqbal Chahal by text with queries about the matter, but hadn’t received a response by the time of publishing. An email to the secretary in the MPSC, Suvarna Kharat, didn’t elicit a response either. This report will be updated once a response is received.
Each of the 25 administrative wards in the BMC limits has a ward office that is headed by a ward officer who is responsible for looking after municipal services in the area.
Speaking to ThePrint, a second ward said “everything related to a ward is the responsibility of the assistant commissioner”.
“In fact, an assistant commissioner is the link between the municipal commissioner and citizens. Whatever services are mentioned in the BMC budget that we have to provide, all have to be delivered by the assistant commissioner,” the officer added.
The first officer said that ward officers get to the post “after taking the MPSC competitive exams”.
“One also needs five years of Class 2 experience (administrative experience) to get selected for the post of assistant commissioner. But now, the executive engineers are in charge and work is getting impacted,” the officer added.
Former corporators ThePrint spoke to disagreed, saying the lack of ward officers was not likely to impact the civic body’s day-to-day functioning and delivery of services.
They did admit, though, that the large-scale vacancies were creating discontent within the BMC and had given the Opposition reason to attack the Maharashtra government.
The term of the BMC, the country’s richest civic body, got over in March 2022 and elections haven’t been held since then. Run by the undivided Shiv Sena for 25 years, the BMC is currently under a state-appointed administrator, Chahal.
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Ward functions getting affected?
A ward officer looks after the entire functioning of the ward, which includes going on-site and undertaking inspections. All major departments of the BMC, such as security, roads, estate, sewerage, etc, have smaller departments in each ward office.
“Whatever services we provide to citizens, those services have a smaller department in each ward to ensure timely delivery,” said the second ward officer.
The ward office responsibilities include taking care of complaints of citizens or corporators and forwarding them to the respective departments, inspection of repair works, putting up of proposals relating to road encroachment or street-sweeping, and holding of regular meetings with various departments.
Former corporators Makarand Narvekar of Colaba ward and Kaptan Malik of Kurla ward told ThePrint that work was unlikely to get impacted in the absence of an assistant commissioner.
“In my opinion, the ward is not headless and an executive engineer is looking after it. He has known the BMC for many years and risen from the lower ranks to reach the post,” said Narvekar
Malik agreed. “An executive engineer is capable of looking after the ward. And they have been working for a long time. So, I don’t see it as a problem,” he said.
However, the first ward officer quoted above said “executive engineers are aware of their own department more than other departments, and not trained to look after the entire administrative functioning”.
The second ward officer added, “They take some time to understand the functioning of the ward, maybe a year or two, and in that period, complaints of citizens might accumulate and services can get hampered.”
“There is always a difference of opinion between politicians and the bureaucracy. They (politicians) would prefer not to have assistant commissioners and instead prefer someone who can be easy to deal with. But that is not how the administration should work. In a democratic system, what is in the law needs to be followed, and not what the corporators want,” he added.
Why the vacancies
According to the first ward officer, the assistant commissioner posts are lying vacant because the MPSC has yet to give out final appointment letters to candidates who cleared the previous exams.
The officer said the posts were advertised by the MPSC in July 2021 and a written exam for the same was held in October that year. ThePrint has seen a copy of the ad.
An interview of the shortlisted candidates was, however, held almost two years later, in August 2023, and the final results were declared in September, the officer added.
The candidates who made it to the merit list sent correspondence to the secretary of MPSC on 9 October — a copy of which is with ThePrint — asking for the “final recommendation list”.
The vacant posts have also become a talking point for the Opposition.
Mumbai Congress president Varsha Gaikwad approached the Chief Minister’s Office this September and demanded that the process of filling up the vacant BMC posts be started immediately. She alleged that the functioning of the wards was getting impacted.
On Tuesday, Gaikwad alleged favouritism from the government’s side.
“We had once again written to the chief minister on 16 September that the process of filling these vacant posts should be started immediately, but this government wants to be ‘in charge’. They only want to do their ‘profitable’ work by installing their favourite officials in these seats. This corrupt government has nothing to do with the suffering caused to the common man,” she claimed on social media.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray also questioned the government’s delay in filling up the posts and alleged that the government had an “anti-Mumbai attitude”.
Currently, Dilip Pandharpatte is functioning as the “acting chairman” of the MPSC. Maharashtra Director General of Police Rajnish Seth was appointed the chairman of the MPSC in October, but has yet to take up the position.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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