5 things Mumbai needs on priority from new Mahayuti govt led by Devendra Fadnavis

Mumbai, home to 21 million and 386 billionaires, faces governance and infrastructure challenges

With a population of approximately 21 million people, and ranked third among the world’s cities by number of billionaires (386 according to the latest Hurun Rich List), Mumbai is plagued by multiple challenges. While the new metro lines, the coastal road, Atal Setu and the Goregaon Mulund Link Road are promising developments, the city is also beset with issues related to infrastructure, transport and public service. As the new government takes shape, here are five things it needs to focus on.

Mumbai skyline (REUTERS)

Mumbai needs corporators

The country’s richest civic body and its life force – the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) -- has been operating without corporators for the past three years. The absence of 227 sitting corporators, the longest vacancy in the civic body’s 150-year history, has had significant implications on governance and lives of people.

Unlike MLAs and MPs, corporators are the most accessible elected representatives, often the first point of contact during crises.

The BMC elections have not been conducted over the last three years , mostly due to legal challengers over issues such as demarcation of the ward boundaries, increase in the number of wards and corporators, and the conduct elections in 92 municipal councils and panchayats without OBC quota.

While most of the legal issues have been addressed, the state government showed little inclination for the polls (while they are conducted by the state election commission, the timing is effectively decided by the state government).

Now, with Mahayuti’s impressive victory in the assembly election, BMC officials are optimistic that the long-awaited civic elections will likely be held soon.

Since March 2022, the municipal commissioner has served in multiple key roles — state-appointed administrator, de facto mayor and the head of the standing committee. As a result of this, the system of checks and balances have been replaced by a single decision-making authority where proposals for the city’s betterment are created, approved and executed solely by the municipal commissioner.

Former Congress corporator Asif Zakaria called corporators “bridges that connect BMC to citizens; in their absence there is zero accountability on the part of the administration”.

More Metro lines

The promise of a well-oiled Metro, networking across 337 km of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), infused a shot of optimism among Mumbaikars when the project took off in 2008. Sixteen years later, the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited is all of 50-km long. The chief minister will have to ensure that work on at least another 125 km to link greater Mumbai with MMR is expedited.

The 125-km network will have five Metro lines, which will reduce the passenger load from the suburban railway. These lines are expected to cumulatively ferry 4.5 million passengers daily, though actual ridership numbers are likely to vary once the routes are operational.

Currently, the five metro lines exist only on paper.

The 125-km line encompasses the 35-km long Airport Line to connect Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport with Navi Mumbai International Airport (Metro 8), the 9.20-km Gaimukh-Shivaji Chowk/ Kashi Mira line (Metro 10), the 12.70-km Wadala to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus line (Metro 11), the 23-km Shivaji Chowk/ Kashi Mira to Virar line (Metro 13) and the 45-km Kanjurmarg to Badlapur line (Metro 14).

Dhawal Ashar, programme head of Integrated Transport, World Resources Institute, said: “Over the next five years, MMR is poised to add public transport capacity like never before, with over 300-km of metro and hopefully over 10,000 buses. However to realise the full potential of this capacity, the focus has to be on creating people friendly infrastructure for all road users; the diminishing infrastructure for pedestrians is a concern.”

Fast-tracking MUTP

Although Mumbai’s dense suburban rail network is constantly upgraded and improved, two phases (3 and 3A) of the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP), which are currently underway at the cost of nearly ₹ 45,000 crore, need a monetary boost from the state to fast-track the projects.

MUTP-3 is expected to cost ₹10,947 crore of which ₹6,129 crore will be raised through loans, while the Union railway ministry and the state have to shell out the rest on 50:50 cost-sharing.

While Indian Railways has been consistently funding the projects, the state government has not been as consistent, a railways official told HT. The official said the funding was stalled when Uddhav Thackeray was the chief minister, allegedly owing to different political dispensations at the state and Centre, and the then CM’s own cautious style of functioning. It gradually picked up speed when Eknath Shinde took over the reins. “However, the speed of fund disbursement has remained inconsistent since the focus has been on creating metro lines,” added the official.

Some of the major projects planned under MUTP-3 are procurement of 47 AC local trains and quadrupling of the Virar and Dahanu Road lines. Those under MUTP-3A include procuring 191 AC rakes, revamping 19 stations and new tracks on western and central lines, and extending Harbour Line from Goregaon to Borivali.

Nandkumar Deshmukh, president, Federation of Suburban Railway Passengers Association blamed red-tapism for the railways and the state government constantly being at loggerheads. He is hoping that things will move faster now.

More BEST buses

The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking completed 150 years in May. But with a dwindling fleet size over the years and mounting losses, the undertaking was in no mood to celebrate.

The transport wing has been struggling to remain afloat for a couple of decades. This year, it has sought a grant of ₹2,812 crore from its parent body -- Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai -- to expand the fleet size to 8,000 by March 2026 from the current 2,913. Of the existing fleet, the undertaking owns 1,013 buses, while the remaining 1,900 are leased.

Citizens’ transport forum, Amchi Mumbai, Amchi BEST (AMAB) has been flagging the need for 6000 buses to cater to Mumbai’s population for almost a year.

Every year, BEST seeks financial support from the civic body, but “availability of funds has remained a challenge, to the extent that we have approached financial institutions for line of credit”, said a BEST official who asked not to be named. Lack of funds forced the undertaking to lease buses. The leased fleet has had its share of struggles with one of the operators pulling the plug and taking 280 buses off roads, thereby affecting up to five lakh passengers recently.

Commuters and BEST unions alike have called for an overhaul of BEST. As Mumbai Metro lines become operational, last mile connectivity becomes crucial to discourage people from taking private transport.

Another issue hindering expansion plans to cater to 3.2-3.5 million commuters daily, is the unavailability of new buses despite placing orders. BEST has proposed adding 1,200 double-decker A/c e-buses, 2,100 single-decker A/c e-buses and 2,650 single-decker e-buses. While orders for 200 A/C double-decker e-buses were placed with Switch Mobility, the manufacturer has supplied only 50 buses so far – the escalation in manufacturing costs has stalled the rest of the order for almost a year. The undertaking is also struggling to procure 2,100 single-decker e-buses from Olectra Greentech, which has supplied only 300 buses so far.

The dwindling fleet will only mean more people switching over to self-owned vehicles or using cabs, further congesting the already choked roads of Mumbai.

Expansion of the fleet is key to BEST’s revival, but the buses have to be owned and operated by the transport utility, and not through contractors. The contractors’ performance have been proven to be abysmal,” said Hussain Indorewala, convenor of AMAB. “While BEST is already an arm of the BMC, its budget should be merged with the BMC, the way Indian Railways budget was merged with the Union Budget,”

Old SoBo bldgs need revamp

South Mumbai is dotted with more than 19,000 cessed buildings of which only one-third have been rebuilt. The remaining over 80-year-old 13,000 buildings await reconstruction. Over the last three decades, a handful of buildings have collapsed every monsoon, costing lives.Residential buildings constructed before 1960 in Maharashtra are termed cessed properties because they pay a cess (also called a repair fund) to the government.

The new government needs to urgently look at the plight of lakhs of residents who live in these cessed buildings. Along with initiating the redevelopment of Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slum colonies, the state will also need to turn its attention to revamping south Mumbai through policy intervention that is beneficial to its residents.

Eknath Rajapure who heads MHADA Sangharsh Kruti Samiti, a residents’ association, and is himself a resident of one of the 388 dilapidated MHADA buildings, said while the government has been promoting cluster redevelopment, where multiple plots are amalgamated (Bhendi Bazaar, Kamathipura, BDD Chawl and Abhyudaya Nagar), the smaller plots on which their buildings in south Mumbai stand have not been lucrative for builders. “The state should make amendments to existing Development Control & Promotion Regulations to make such stand-alone buildings viable for developers and transform people’s lives,” said Rajapure.