Mumbai Municipal Polls: Fadnavis Urges Early Elections

Mumbai, Feb 28 (PTI) Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said lack of people's representatives in local bodies worries him, and hoped that municipal elections are held soonest.

Fadnavis added that only the Supreme Court can ensure that the elections happen, and added that he expects an "ultimate decision" on the issue from the apex court in two days.

"We want it to happen very early. We feel we cannot deprive our local bodies from local representatives. We are absolutely worried about that," Fadnavis said, speaking at the Mumbai Tech Week here.

For more than two years, several local bodies in the state, including the richest municipal corporation of Mumbai, have been without people's representatives, and bureaucrats are running the entire show, handling thousands of crore of public money without the conventional checks and balances.

As per an estimate, over Rs 70,000 crore of budget is directly overseen by the bureaucrats every year. The Supreme Court is hearing a public interest litigation pressing for municipal elections.

Meanwhile, Fadnavis said that the state is gearing up for a future where cyber crimes go up, and added that street crimes will only account for about 30 per cent of criminal offences.

The state has created a separate corporation on cyber crime, and is working to have a cyber crime headquarters in the satellite city of Navi Mumbai.

He said two Indian states have approached Maharashtra to learn more and create similar cyber crime headquarters.

Speaking at the event on Thursday, Fadnavis said Mumbai may seem unaffordable because of the lack of infrastructure building and added that it is due to the same that the city lost out to Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

He attributed this to a lack of infrastructure creation in the city between 2000-2014, and added that his government is now working on the same.

Fadnavis said the Atal Setu will help create a "third Mumbai" in the vicinity of the upcoming airport, and added that there will also be a "fourth Mumbai" around the Wadhawan port to the north.

The government wants to create "thematic cities" from here on, which will be dedicated to particular sector or activities.

Citing recent data from Startup India, Fadnavis asserted that Maharashtra is the startup capital both in terms of the number of entities and also in terms of the capital they've raised.

He said 30 per cent of the startups are technology-based.

The chief minister also asked the youngsters to take steps to manage stress in a better way, adding that he is better at managing stress than what he was in 2014, when he was sworn in as the chief minister.

Fadnavis said he wouldn't advise people to pursue yoga because he doesn't practice it himself, but added that he has heard of some advantages of it.