Mumbai: After splitting Mumbai’s largest ward, P North (Malad), the BMC has now bifurcated K East (Vile Parle [East], Andheri [East], Jogeshwari [East], and Marol), resulting in the newly formed K North ward, which serves a population of eight lakh. The new ward office, located in a 12-story building at Poonam Nagar in Jogeshwari, will be inaugurated this week, bringing the total number of administrative wards in Mumbai to 26.
The civic wards of P North, K East, and L are among the largest in Mumbai in terms of both population and geographic size. The vast areas they cover have made it increasingly difficult to deliver essential civic amenities, such as water and sanitation, to residents. This challenge has fueled a long-standing demand from corporators and local communities to redraw the boundaries of these wards for better governance. After a six-year wait, the BMC split P North into P East and P West, with a new office inaugurated in October 2023.
The proposal to split K East was approved by the administration last year. After bifurcation of the existing 15 corporators, seven will be in K South and eight in K North. The three floors of civic building in Poonam Nagar will be used as new ward office of K North. However, a proposal to split L Ward (Kurla, Saki Naka, Chunabhatti and Chandivli) has put on hold, since it was suggested merging some areas of L with M West (Chembur).
Out of the 24 BMC wards in the city, assistant commissioners are not currently in charge of 16 wards, which are instead being managed by executive engineers and deputy chief engineers. This situation has drawn criticism from activists and former corporators. The BMC has attributed these vacancies to delays in the recruitment of assistant commissioners by the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC).
The proposal to split the 16 existing corporator wards of L includes dividing them into nine for L-North and seven for L-South. A panel appointed for this bifurcation suggested reorganising the wards by removing some corporator wards and merging them with others.
This could save costs and time associated with establishing new infrastructure for the wards, believes civic official. Currently, M-West ward has only seven corporator wards, while M-East has about 15. Under the new proposal, three corporator wards from L and two from M-East are set to be merged into M-West. However, the bifurcation of these wards are yet to take place.
