BMC plans to divide more wards to enhance quality of services

After announcing P North’s bifurcation, civic body mulls to split K East and L wards too

In order to provide quality services to the Mumbaikars, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) decided to bifurcate two more municipal wards.

In the estimated budget, the civic body has announced to bifurcate the densely populated and geographically vast, P North ward into two sub wards.

Presently, there are 17 electoral wards covering Dindoshi Hills in the east to Malvani in the east under the P north ward and nearly 9.5 lakh people reside in this ward over an area of 4,600 hectares.

Civic administration has stated that this ward will be further split into P East and

P West wards which will cover separately the areas of Malad East and West taking the total number of municipal wards into 25. The civic body has already earmarked a spot for the new office building of this ward and a fund of Rs 5 crore has been allotted in the budget.

BMC chief Iqbal Singh Chahal also stated that after the P North ward, many more wards will be taken into consideration for bifurcation. "There is a pending demand of splitting the K East and L ward also, we are in consideration of the decision and a joint decision on this matter is likely to be taken soon," Chahal said.

A senior official of the civic body said, the BMC planned to further split the K East ward which covers the Andheri East, Jogeshwari and parts of Sakinaka into K North ward. This new ward will cover areas Jogeshwari, Goregaon East, parts of Powai and Aarey colony. "The K East is one of the densely populated wards and also covers a large geographical area. People from far areas like Jogeshwari have to come to Andheri East for a single civic issue, hence our aim is to ease the burden on this ward by making a new ward," said an official.

The official also stated, in the long run the BMC has a plan to increase the present number of wards by 11, by bifurcating more wards.

The official stated, this is also being done to make sure the total number of electoral wards in these wards is equal.

"There needs to be a minimum eight and maximum eleven sub electoral wards in each municipal ward," the official pointed out.

"Bifurcation of wards would require more people and manpower, I hope by doing so BMC will be able to address COVID issues more efficiently," said Jagdish Amin, corporator of K East.