Mumbai: The office set up by Mumbai (suburbs) Guardian Minister Mangal Prabhat Lodha, a BJP member, in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) building has the Opposition in Maharashtra up in arms.
Not only is the office itself controversial — he is the first minister in 75 years to have an office in the BMC building — Lodha has triggered further uproar by assigning the space to former BJP corporators to meet the public and address their grievances.
There are no active corporators in the BMC right now as the term of the general body lapsed in March 2022, and elections remain pending. The BMC is currently run by an administrator appointed by the state government, Iqbal Singh Chahal.
The minister’s move comes at a time when no other party has office space in the BMC building — the five party offices that existed (Shiv Sena, Congress, BJP, NCP, and Samajwadi Party) were sealed by the BMC following a scuffle between the two rival factions of the Shiv Sena in December 2022.
Lodha has defended the move as one meant for public outreach.
In a tweet, he said they “will sit here and solve people’s problems faster”.
“This is not a government that sits at home and is run through social media,” he added.
However, former state minister and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MLA Aaditya Thackeray said it was a “dictatorial” bid to capture the BMC.
“It’s a dictatorial way of capturing Mumbai and BMC, which they never will in a free, fair, democratic way,” Thackeray told ThePrint.
Noting that polls to the civic body are in the offing, the Shiv Sena, the Congress and the Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have also questioned why Lodha needed an office in the BMC building when Mantralaya, the state secretariat, is 2km away.
Congress leader Ravi Raja, former leader of opposition in the civic body, told ThePrint that the “BMC administrator is acting against the rules of the BMC Act, which state that only elected corporators can have office space”.
ThePrint has mailed Chahal for a comment on the matter.
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BJP MLA defends move
The guardian minister’s office was inaugurated last week, and thrown open to the public Monday.
A weekly roster has been prepared for the BJP’s 72 former corporators to visit the headquarters in two slots — 11am to 2pm and 2pm to 6pm — from Mondays to Fridays. They will sit in Lodha’s office. The minister, meanwhile, will be in this office thrice a week, 4pm to 6pm.
Speaking to the media at the Vidhan Bhavan, BJP MLA Amit Satam welcomed the decision.
“All Mumbaikars are welcome in this office. Whether they are a common citizen or public representative, anyone who wants to get their work done through the guardian minister can visit the office,” he added.
He also sought to defend the office space assigned for former BJP corporators. “If the guardian minister is busy in the assembly and he has appointed some people to attend to the people, I don’t think there’s any issue or anything wrong.”
In a tweet, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) spokesperson Clyde Crasto shared the roster and said the move “proves that setting up office of guardian minister Mr Lodha was a planned strategy to bring back ex-corporators” of the Mumbai BJP to the BMC head office.
“With offices of other political parties shut because the term of corporators has ended, the BJP will now slowly run BMC alone,” he added.
Thackeray said this was an attack on the federal structure.
“I’ve had hundreds of meetings as a minister with the BMC, but it was always with due respect to the institution and with the permission of the mayor. This is basically a hostile takeover or a builder-like encroachment of the BMC,” he added.
He said Lodha — whose family runs a real estate business — and the BJP “probably needed to be close to the BMC, to bully officers, to pass his own building proposal files”.
Raja said the BMC’s autonomy was being challenged. “When our offices are closed, why do former BJP corporators have a space to operate from within the BMC?” he added.
“Besides, the Mantralaya is just 10 minutes from the BMC, so why does he [Lodha] need another office? Even before this there were guardian ministers,” he said. “This has been done to abolish the rights of the entire corporation.”
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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