Overview
- Ameet Satam, the BJP’s Mumbai president, wrote on Monday to BMC Standing Committee chair Prabhakar Shinde asking to cancel a special ₹4 crore per ward provision for six Andheri West wards he called disproportionate.
- Shinde said the add-on money was granted based on corporators’ demands and signaled no rollback, adding that remaining funds would be released through the year as requests come in.
- Reporting shows ruling-party corporators received much larger top-ups than most opposition members, with BJP and Shiv Sena corporators getting at least ₹2.5 crore while many from Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, and MNS got ₹25 lakh.
- Large individual grants drew scrutiny, including ₹20 crore to BJP leader of the house Ganesh Khankar and ₹10 crore each to BJP corporator Rajashree Shirwadkar and Shiv Sena group leader Amey Ghole, while the standard annual ward grant is ₹1.6 crore per corporator.
- Outlets differ on totals and pools, with The Indian Express citing a ₹900 crore standing-committee fund and Free Press Journal reporting ₹800 crore, and with Andheri West add-ons described as either ₹39 crore in all or a separate ₹4 crore-per-ward provision, fueling calls for clear criteria and possible reallocation affecting local works.