Miffed Congress to take up BMC ward reservation issue with its top leadership

HT Correspondent

MUMBAI: Congress has once again raked up the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) ward reservation issue by warning Shiv Sena that the Mumbai unit will take up the matter with the party’s central leadership.

Former union minister and Congress leader Milind Deora has said that the political alliances cannot be “one-sided.”

Congress is upset as 21 of the 29 seats held by the party in the BMC have now been reserved for women. Congress corporators held a meeting on Saturday to discuss the issue and sought the intervention of the party leadership in the matter.

The city unit of Congress has threatened to approach the court if their concerns were not addressed by the BMC administration. The Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC) has also warned the Shiv Sena against taking the party “for granted” and said it would contest the civic polls due later this year alone and not as part of the larger Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA).

Congress is a junior partner in the MVA headed by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) being its other constituent.

“The greatest casualty of @mybmc’s ward reservation has been @Incindia, despite being being an MVA ally. Political alliances cannot be one-sided. I will raise this issue on behalf of our Municipal Councillors with the party’s leadership (sic),” tweeted Deora, while tagging senior Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

“This is not a co-incidence… It may not be an exaggeration to claim that the Shiv Sena may be trying to trouble the Congress by reserving these wards,” Bhai Jagtap, president of MRCC, had charged earlier. He had also called the reservation process

“biased and prejudiced.”

However, the charge has been denied by BMC commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal, who has asserted that the lottery was carried out in a transparent manner.

“Over two thousand people were present in the auditorium during the lottery, the tokens for the lottery were made using A-4 sized paper and were drawn by children from municipal schools and each paper was displayed to the audience and media after they were taken out from the box. This was the best possible transparent method that was followed during the lottery,” Chahal had told HT.