It’s important for first time voters to get a sense of how to recognise issues and know who their representatives are

I came from Nagpur in July to do a year-long course in Journalism at  St. Pauls Institute of Communication Education (commonly referred to by us as SPICE), in Bandra West. Currently, I live in Kurla, which is convenient as a location and also for transport.

As the Vidhan Sabha elections are likely to be held towards the end of the year, we were assigned a project,  where we had to identify and name the MP, the MLA, and the  Corporator of our locality. Since this was a project to map our area, we were told to begin at the lowest level of governance (civic) by finding out the electoral ward of our area, and then proceeding to the other two higher levels. However, I chose to do this in reverse.

It is important to know that Mumbai is divided into six Lok Sabha constituencies, 36 Vidhan Sabha constituencies, and 227 electoral wards. Besides this, another piece of useful mapping is finding out which administrative ward is yours. This is to get an idea of their different functions.

In Mumbai, while electoral wards are numbered, administrative wards are represented by alphabets – from A to T. I live in the L ward.

Map of Mumbai's BMC wards (A-R) and electoral wards. ( 1--227). 
Recently, one more ward was carved out of two existing wards. K- North
Map of Mumbai’s BMC wards (A-R) and electoral wards. ( 1–227).
Recently, one more ward was carved out of two existing wards. K- North

The easiest task was to find out my Lok Sabha constituency.  Here I should point out that the first thing you do is work from your proper address. Since I live in Kurla, I just went on Google and checked. Mumbai North Central is where I am located according to Lok Sabha constituency. This includes Vile Parle, Chandivali, Kurla, Kalina, Bandra (or Vandre) West, and Bandra East. It was easier to find out from there, who my MP is – none other than INC’s  Varsha Gaikwad, who defeated the BJP’s Ujwal Nikam in the recent Lok Sabha elections.

Based on my address, I now know that my Vidhan Sabha constituency is Kurla West. To check who my MLA is currently, I went back to Google and got my answer, – Mangesh Kudalkar from Shiv Sena [Shinde group].

A representation of Mumbai's lok sabha constituencies, each with each with 6 vidhan sabha.
A representation of Mumbai’s lok sabha constituencies, each with each with 6 vidhan sabha.

Here I would like to add a tip – to check in which constituency you live, use your pincode and start from there.

Of course, you will then want to check out how effective your MLA has been in the past five years since he/she was elected. I would like to recommend that you go to the Praja Foundation website https://www.praja.org/ Here you will get the “who, what, where, how, and why” performance of your MLA in detail.

What I found tough was to locate my area’s corporator, mainly because there is no one right now. This is because elections should have been held in 2022 but were cancelled. Since then, Mumbai has been run by career bureaucrats.

To find my corporator, I had to search through many websites but there was no solid information. Finally, searching at random,  I got a PDF which helped me to find the corporator of my area.

However, the BMC website https://portal.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portal/anonymous?guest_user=english is a very helpful website that tells one a lot about Mumbai, giving detailed information that is very useful. Also useful is  https://www.maharashtra.gov.in/

Chart showing party representation in the last BMC house 2017.
Chart showing party representation in the last BMC house 2017.

For students of journalism, it is important to know how to map one’s city. In the first place, this gives you an idea of how the city is governed and the human element of the politics of the system. In the second place, mapping a constituency in order to write about it, makes one familiar with the issues it faces. Together, these can be a source of any number of stories. As a budding journalist, interested in politics and governance, this is where I will finally work.

There are 36 Vidhan Sabha Constituencies in Mumbai –

Sr.no according to Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha.MLAConstituency
152Sunil RaneBorivali
153Manish ChaudharyDahisar
154Prakash SurveMagathane
155Mihir KotechaMulund
156Sunil RautVikhroli
157Ramesh KorgaonkarBhandup [W]
158Ravindra WaikarJogeshwari [E]
159Sunil PrabhuDindoshi
160Atul BhatkhalkarKandivali [E]
161Yogesh SagarCharkop
162Aslam ShaikhMalad [W]
163Vidya ThakurGoregaon
164Bharti LavekarVersova
165Ameet SatamAndheri [W]
166Rutuja LatkeAndheri [E]
167Parag AlavaniVile Parle
168Dilip LandeChandivali
169Ramchandra KadamGhatkopar [W]
170Parag ShahGhatkopar [E]
171Abu Asim AzmiMankhurd Shivaji Nagar
172Nawab MalikAnushakti Nagar
173Prakash PhaterpekarChembur
174Mangesh KudalkarKurla
175Sanjay PotnisKalina
176Zeeshan SiddiqueVandre [E]
177Ashish ShelharVandre [W]
178Varsha GaikwadDharavi
179Captain R Tamil SelvanSion
180Kalidas KolambkarWadala
181Sada SarvankarMahim
182Aditya ThackerayWorli
183Ajay ChoudhariShivadi
184Yamini JadhavByculla
185Mangal Prabhat LodhaMalabar Hill
186Amin Amir Ali PatelMumbadevi
187Rahul NarvekarColaba
Hemant Bajpai

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