With the civic elections around the corner, the NGO Praja Foundation’s recent annual report has rated the Mumbai’s corporators’ performances in the past four years. But to the dismay of the city, only 2 of the 220 corporators fall in ‘A’ grade — the ranking given by the NGO based on their overall performance. Unfortunately for Mumbai, 99.55 per cent of the corporators have not prioritised citizens’ complaints and issues when asking questions in the BMC, and thus have received ‘E’ and ‘F’ grades in the Financial Years 2017-18 to 2020-21. To add to this, when it comes to quality of questions, none of the corporators achieved an A Grade in the past four years.
At least 90 per cent of the total councillors (198) have received C, D, E & F grades in the overall performance for FY 2017-2021, showing the need for major improvements in performance. Citizens’ complaints are one of the most important aspects of a councillor’s responsibilities. According to the report the corporators have failed to fulfil this primary responsibility of raising citizen issues.

“Now that the BMC elections are around the corner, we need to understand how our current elected representatives have performed in the last term and this is an opportune moment to inspect the performances," said Nitai Mehta, founder and managing trustee, Praja Foundation.