Mumbai: The Nagpur unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) On Tuesday released a photograph of its entire leadership team in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC). It would have been a regular routine photo of the party’s group leader in the civic body, Balya Borkar, surrounded by the heads of the various committees that will rule the civic body. Except, it wasn’t.
Borkar was flanked by over 10 women in sarees of various hues of pink.
In what may be a first for any municipal corporation in Maharashtra, Nagpur—the home turf of Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis—will, for the next five years, be run entirely by women. The BJP has appointed its women corporators to all key positions in the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
The civic body, which went to polls in January along with all other municipal corporations in the state, elected a woman mayor—Nita Thakre—and a woman deputy mayor—Leela Hathibed—earlier this month after the two posts were reserved for women corporators during a lottery.
“When the top two posts went to women, at that time itself the BJP leadership took a decision to appoint women to the posts of all chairpersons in the corporation,” Dayashankar Tiwari, the BJP Nagpur president, told reporters.
Accordingly, in a special general meeting on Tuesday the BJP finalised the names of women corporators who will lead the various committees of the civic body. The women corporators are expected to take charge on 8 March, on occasion of International Women’s Day.
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An all-women leadership
The BJP, which has had a strong grip over the Nagpur civic body, won the corporation for the fourth time in a row in the polls held last month, clinching 102 out of the total 151 seats. Of these, 54 are women.
There are a total of 12 committees in the corporation that women corporators will lead. These include the standing committee, which is in charge of all major works of the civic body. It controls the civic body’s coffers by having the authority to approve tenders, offer contracts and so on.
The Nagpur civic body’s standing committee will be led by Shivani Dani, who is a functionary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha and is known to be among the Nagpur corporators in Fadnavis’ good books.
Other than the standing committee, the other committees that will function with women chairpersons are committees overseeing transport, fire services, education, slum redevelopment, health, law, sports, water supply, women and child welfare, taxation, and estate.
‘Women good at multi-tasking’
Maya Iwnate, a BJP corporator who will take charge of the fire committee, said Nagpur will go down in history as being the first city to put its trust in all women.
“I have spent 30 years in politics and have never seen a corporation being steered entirely by women leaders. Women have come a long way in those 30 years. We do almost everything and many of us have leadership qualities. All we need is a chance to prove ourselves,” Iwnate told ThePrint.
She said, in comparison with men, women are multi-takers. They manage the entire household while doing other things. “We efficiently manage our expenses and save money for the family. The same way we will save the city’s money now.”
“It’s an experiment that neither the city nor the party will regret,” she added.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)