Mumbai: During the last ten years, a total of 16 corporators in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been disqualified, of which two were disqualified on the ground they had more than two children.
The other 14 were disqualified and lost their membership on the charge of submitting false caste certificates while filing nominations.
As political parties are in the process of choosing their candidates for the elections to the BMC on February 21, they are being asked to nominate not only those without criminal records but also those who abide by every rule.
The information on the disqualified members were revealed in a reply to Right to Information (RTI) activist Anil Galgali by Municipal Secretary’s Office of the BMC.
According to the reply provided by Assistant BMC Secretary Pramod Giri, available records reveal that during the earlier tenure of BMC between 2007-2012, 12 corporators — Shirish Chogle, Sunil Chavan, Lalji Yadav, Rashmi Pahadukar, Narayan Pawar, Pravin Devhare, Vishvanath Mahadeshwar, Subhash Sawant, Anjum Aslmam, Simantini Narkar and Bharti Dhandge — were disqualified for submitting false caste certificate.
The candidates had apparently submitted false documents when they contested a seat reserved for scheduled tribe or scheduled caste candidates.
In December 2011, Gulshan Chauhan, a Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) corporator from South Mumbai was disqualified because she was found violating the not more than two child norm.
In December 2014, Siraj Shaikh of the Congress was disqualified as a corporator for the same reason as he had three daughters and did reveal it at the time of filing his nomination for the BMC election in February 2012.
Maharashtra is among the few states where the two-child norm introduced in 1995 is active. The objective of the policy is dissuade people from having a third child by restricting access to certain services as well as not allowing them from contesting elections to local self governments, that is from gram panchayats (village committees) to municipal corporations. They cannot even apply to government jobs and given no access to certain government free services.
This was one method of curbing population by ensuring that the elected public servant served as a role model to others.
During the BMC tenure from 2012-2017, the situation improved considerably since only four corporators were disqualified during the last five years. Bhavna Jobanputra, Mohammed Ishaq and Kondum Anupa were disqualified for producing false caste certificates. Shaikh lost his membership as he had more than two children.
Galgali also expressed dismay that important information was not posted on the BMC’s official website. He hoped that parties made sure that candidates with proper caste certificates were nominated to fight elections, so that disqualification does not come up again.
