FAQs

This site has been developed by Praja Foundation whose motto is to Simplify People's Lives. The site allows you to communicate directly with your elected representatives. Praja has facilitated this process by putting up the necessary information pertaining to the councillors and the MLAs as well as about the immediate and the long-term issues confronting the different constituencies in Mumbai city.

The information on this site will help you to learn more about the area you live in, the resources and the problems of your area as well as the city generally, and the work done by elected representatives so far. You will know what the responsibilities of the councillors and the MLAs are towards your constituency. This will help you to cross check whether your elected representatives have delivered accordingly. It also allows you to hold your elected representatives accountable. Simultaneously, because your elected representatives know that their work is being scrutinized, they may consider it as an incentive to become transparent in all their actions.

You can interact directly with your elected representatives by writing to them on a regular basis from our message board. By discussing the problems of your local area on the discussion board, you can learn from other people's experiences in their wards.

The 'News of the Day' section helps you to keep track of the happenings in the city and assess how these relate with the situation in your constituency and/or to the performance of your elected representatives.

The site is also designed to facilitate the creation of a community of informed and active citizens who will participate in bringing about change in their localities. This is our E-citizenship programme wherein you get access to our social audit reports. Our hope is that E-citizens will eventually become a pressure group that will influence elected representatives to be responsible, transparent and accountable to the people.

If you are not a member of the E-citizenship program, you can still see the background of your elected representatives and the status of your constituency as a snapshot. You can also write to your elected representatives about the pressing problems in your area that have not yet been resolved or that continue to persist despite repeated complaints.

Every constituency in Mumbai is unique and faces its own particular issues. On this site, we have uploaded detailed information about the status of different infrastructure and on-the-ground issues in each constituency:

1. Health - This portfolio consists of information about the conditions of the municipal and state hospitals and dispensaries in the ward, the top five sensitive health problems that require immediate attention, and the availability of doctors in the hospitals and dispensaries.
2. Education - Here we have hosted statistics about the number of children who have dropped out of municipal schools, the student-teacher ratio in the municipal schools, passing rates of standard 10 children and the gender ratio in the schools.
3. Crime - Details about the top five FIRs lodged in each police station in the city, the major categories of crime in each ward, in-depth information of each police station including the number of personnel on the beat and how many of these have been deployed to provide special security to VIPs, the contact details of the police stations, statistics of the crimes committed against women and children, and reported cases of rioting have been uploaded under this heading.
4. Civic issues - The top 100 complaints registered on the BMC's complaint management system each month, and the department wise and ward wise redressal of these complaints have been listed and used as a benchmark for reporting on the status of civic infrastructure in the wards. A list of pending complaints that have not yet been redressed has also been added.

Snapshots of this information are available for anyone visiting the site to see.

If you have registered under the E-citizenship program, you will be eligible to receive more detailed information concerning your ward. This information will be provided to you in the form of social audit reports that will be generated by our data management system (DMS).

You can also contribute to this section by providing us with information that you believe must be uploaded for everyone to see.

To know about the issues in your constituency, visit know your constituency/ward page.

This site has been designed to provide you with detailed information about the work done by the councillors and MLAs in your ward/constituency. This includes:

1. Background details such as their financial assets, their educational qualifications, criminal cases against them if any, and their membership in different committees;
2. The projects and infrastructure implemented with the discretionary fund allocated to them each year;
3. Attendance during the house and in assembly sessions;
4. Questions raised by them during the house, and in the meetings of the committees that they are part of such as the standing committee, the BEST committee, education committee, etc.

You will also find information here about the state of the infrastructure in each of the constituencies in the city and the immediate and long-term issues confronting them. This shows you the actual problems in your locality.

You can compare this information with the work that the councillors and the MLAs have been doing in your area and see whether they are aware of the real problems that people are facing. For example, you can see the top five health issues in your ward and then cross check it with the money spent to see if they have taken any measures to tackle these health problems.

This site therefore helps you to set the benchmarks for evaluating the performance of your elected representatives. It aids you in finding out exactly what your councillors and MLAs have been doing during their term, and whether they have delivered as per the promises they made before the elections.

The information on this site will be updated on a quarterly basis, thereby allowing you to see the performance of your elected representatives at regular intervals.

A quick summary of the background information of your elected representatives and of the situation in your constituency is available here. If you wish to receive more detailed information, you will have to sign up with our E-citizenship program.

The information on this site is managed by a Data Management Software (DMS). The data on the Know Your Ward, Know Your Councillor/MLA and Know the Performance of your Elected Representative pages have been linked to each other for generating reports about the constituencies, the elected representatives and their performance, and about political parties.

The reports on this site are periodically uploaded by the administrative staff at Praja and are sent via e-mail to individuals who have registered under the E-citizenship programme. If you are a member of our E-citizenship program, and would like to receive reports about any specific information, please write to us. We will respond to your request at the earliest.

If you are browsing our site for the first time, you will be able to see the background details of each of the elected representatives and get a snapshot of the situation in your constituency here.

RTI applications can be filed with the local, state and national governments as well as with parastatal government organizations. Private organizations implementing public infrastructure projects under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model also have to respond to RTI applications and provide information.

To file an RTI application,

1. Address your application to the Public Information Officer (PIO). Specify which department or government body you need the information from.
2. Put down your name and address clearly (preferably with a phone number) in the application so that the PIO knows where to contact you in order to give you the information.
3. List your questions precisely.
4. Explain clearly how you would like to receive the information i.e., whether by speed post, by ordinary registered post, or in person.
5. If you do not belong to the 'below poverty line' (BPL) category, simply state "no".
6. To complete the application, attach Rs.10 court fee stamp. This stamp is available in the premises of the lower courts and the High Court.

The PIO must respond to you within one month of the application being filed. After the passage of one month, if no information is forthcoming, the PIO can be fined for each day thereafter.

If you are not satisfied with the information that the PIO has given to you, you can file an appeal with the appellate authority who in turn, must respond to you within 15 days of your filing the appeal. In case the appellate authority fails to satisfy you, you can move an appeal to the State Information Commission (SIC) and eventually, to the Central Information Commission (CIC) in New Delhi.

If you require any assistance with filing your RTI application, contact us. We will respond to you at the earliest.