Mumbai: Amin Patel of the Congress has yet again been nominated as the best performing legislator of Mumbai by the Praja Foundation, which rates the performances of elected representatives by researchig on volumnious data.
The Foundation presented the report card of the 29 MLAs of the city. The top three MLAs ranked in this report card are: Amin Patel of the Congress (Rank 1 – Score: 82.80% ), Sunil Prabhu of the Shiv Sena (UBT) (Rank 2 – Score: 81.30% and Manisha Chaudhary of the BJP (Rank 3 – Score: 75.05%).
Only 2 MLAs score 80% or above
Only two MLAs out of 29 achieved an overall score of 80% and above. The report card assesses the performance of MLAs based on their Constitutional and legislative duties. It covers the period between the winter sessions of 2021 and 2022.
“In the past three years, the COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted public lives and posed challenges across various domains such as livelihoods, health, and education. This critical period demanded frequent meetings of elected representatives to effectively address citizen concerns and make inclusive decisions. Moreover, majority of Municipal Corporations in Maharashtra have completed their terms, yet elections are pending. In this context, the legislative assembly stands as the primary platform to raise issues of public importance. However, there has been a significant decline in duration of assembly sessions held in recent years,” said Milind Mhaske, CEO, Praja Foundation.
“Comparing assembly session days from previous terms, the 12th legislative assembly (from winter sessions of 2011 to 2012) met for 58 days, the 13th assembly (from winter sessions of 2016 to 2017) met for 57 days, while the 14th assembly (from winter sessions of 2021 to 2022) met for only 38 days. These assembly session days in a similar period dropped by 34% from the 12th to 14th assembly,” added Mhaske.
“Less number of working days result in lesser opportunities for MLAs to attend and deliberate on public issues. Mumbai MLAs raised a total of 11,214 questions in the 12th Assembly, but this number dropped by 67% to 3,749 questions in the 14th Assembly. This clearly indicates the importance of maximising the number of days of assembly sessions,” said Yogesh Mishra, Head - Research and Analysis, Praja Foundation.
