With only a year left for the civic polls, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started to receive proposals for the beautification of various gardens and open spaces in all the 24 municipal wards of Mumbai.
The Garden Infrastraucture Cell of the civic body has received 164 proposals from various municipal corporators, for carrying out beautification works in the garden areas of their constituencies in the upcoming eleven months. Out of the total proposals, 25 proposals come from corporators of K east ward, which covers the Andheri east and Jogeshwari areas. Following which 20 proposals have come from the M East ward (Govandi, Mankhurd) ad 15 proposals have come from L ward (Kurla Sakinaka).
Senior officials of the GIC department have said that beautification works happens to be the easiest option for the public representatives to show that they have achieved developmental works in the tenure.
"The Municipal corporators want to fast pace the developmental works as many of them want to host ground breaking ceremony just before the election takes place next year," said a senior civic official of garden cell.
The official also added that the cell is sanctioning each project on the basis of the importance of the work.
According to the law of BMC, a public representative can only approach the cell to carry out developmental works only if a garden or open space is in a poor condition. However officials maintained that some representatives are pushing to beautify gardens that are already in good condition.
"Since the last one year we are facing a dearth of labour, also due to the pandemic outbreak the budget for garden maintenance had also been slashed, in this situation we cannot approve everything that comes to us," the official said.
Furthermore, the official said that after the last elections in 2017 to 2019, total 94 gardens have been beautified and beautification of 35 more gardens is underway. The civic polls is likely to take place in February 2022 and presently Shiv Sena is the ruling party in BMC with 97 corporators followed by BJP which has 83 corporators and Congress which has 29 corporators. There are total 227 seats in the BMC.