B Ward, the city’s smallest with just two corporator seats — both held by Congress in the last election — is home to some of Mumbai’s oldest residential and commercial pockets. In neighbourhoods like Bhendi Bazaar, Dongri, Masjid Bunder, Mohammed Ali Road and Mandvi, many buildings date back nearly a century. Some are creaky and dilapidated, while others have begun making way for redevelopment. Yet, amid this churn, one problem remains stubbornly unchanged: the constant accumulation of garbage in the ward’s narrow ‘house gullies’. Residents say the choked lanes are a hygiene hazard, with little sign of a lasting solution.
Politically, the ward has been a Congress stronghold. In the 2012 municipal polls, all three corporator seats of the then-larger B ward went to the party. The last assembly elections saw Congress veteran Amin Patel win the Mumbadevi seat for the fourth consecutive time, while the Lok Sabha constituency returned Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Arvind Sawant for a third straight term.Currently a small portion of one of the corporator ward falls under the Colaba assembly which is represented by BJP MLA Rahul Narwekar.Patel points to civic issues such as low water pressure. He said that with no corporators for over four years now, these issues are taken to the MLA, who has been raising them repeatedly with the BMC administration. “The population of the ward has increased over the years, yet residents continue to receive the same amount of water they did decades ago. On top of that, there is low water pressure. How will this suffice?” he said.Along similar lines, Mohammed Imran K Gujarati, president of the NGO Brotherhood Medical Aid and Welfare Foundation that operates in the Nishanpada area of Dongri, said they are regularly informed about lowpressure water supply in the ward and have no option but to make do with it. He also pointed out that parking along the road has become a major problem in the area. “Most of the buildings in this locality that are being redeveloped are not providing residents with an adequate number of parking spaces, because of which people then park on the road.The roads in this ward are already so narrow that in an emergency it can be very difficult for a fire tender or ambulance to enter. Older buildings — some of which are nearly 100 years old — do not have adequate parking space, so at the very least, new buildings should be constructed with proper parking facilities.”Masjid Bunder resident Sarita Midbaokar, a BJP party worker, said that the opening of Sindoor Bridge — earlier known as Carnac Bridge -in July 2025 brought relief to locals. “The bridge is a keyeast-west link in south Mumbai, but was declared structurally unsafe by Central Railway and dismantled in Aug 2022. Its absence caused major disruption to traffic between P D’Mello Road and the commercial belts of Crawford Market, Kalbadevi and Mohammad Ali Road. When it finally reopened, it came as a godsend,” she said, adding that after the bridge opened, there were some issues regarding traffic movement as the bridge descended towards the Masjid Bunder area, which were resolved through the interventionof local BJP MLA Rahul Narwekar.Yusuf Rangwalla, trustee of Saifee School who has his office in Masjid Bunder and is also the BJP ward No. 224 president, said the accumulation of garbage is a huge concern but will require a change in behaviour from locals as well. “It’s not fair to expect civic staff to collect garbage that is strewn throughout the day,” he said. “Another issue in the ward has been the rise in the number of hawkers, especially in pockets that are already heavily congested.”
