Mumbai’s Indigenous Groups Urge Parties To Nominate Them To BMC Seats

​Mumbai: ​Organisations representing Mumbai's indigenous communities have asked political parties to appoint members of these groups to the five nominated seats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

​Ideally, experts on urban policy are nominated to these posts with the objective of assisting the administration in the creation and development of improvement programmes. The nominated posts offer a chance for small groups that inhabited the areas that became Mumbai to have representatives in the municipal house.

​However, parties have been nominating their own members to the posts. In the last house, based on their strength, the Shiv Sena, with 84 seats, and the BJP, with 82, nominated two corporators each. The Congress nominated one.

​The Bhumiputra Manifesto 2026, released by the Mobai Gaothan Panchayat (MGP), appeals to political parties to take up issues that uniquely affect gaothans—the erstwhile villages absorbed by the city. There are more than a hundred gaothans and koliwadas in the city, such as Ranwar and Chimbai in Bandra; Marol, Sahar, and Kondivita in Andheri; Orlem and Marve in Malad; and Nahur, Kanjur, Kirol, Old Kurla, and Tirandaz in the central suburbs. Most of these villages have been engulfed by slums, and the residents have opposed slum rehabilitation projects in the original gaothan areas.

MGP said that all five nominated corporators in the BMC should be from indigenous groups such as the East Indian, Agri, Koli, Bhandari, Kunbi, and Pathare Prabhu.

​The communities have been saying that their land was used to create infrastructure for the city, such as the airport, university campus, planned housing layouts, the port, and defence installations. "As founders of India's financial capital, the indigenous people will demand their basic rights to ensure the community is recognised and granted privileges for their great contributions to building Mumbai," the MGP stated.

​There was a proposal to increase the number of nominated seats from five to ten. In 2023, the state government tabled a Bill to amend the BMC Act, 1888, along with the Maharashtra Municipal Act, 1949, to increase the number of nominated councillors in all municipal corporations.

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