Residents of Mumbai’s Breach Candy area have prepared a “BMC Footpath Report Card” to track recurring encroachments, assign responsibility and monitor whether civic action is completed within stated timelines. The initiative has been submitted to the municipal commissioner as a possible model for use across municipal wards.
The report card has been prepared by members of the Breach Candy Residents Forum and Breach Candy ALM, which together represent more than 750 families. It follows residents’ concerns that footpath encroachments continue to return despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s Pedestrians First initiative.
The document records the affected stretch, identifies the nature of the problem, specifies the proposed or completed action, names the department responsible and sets a target completion date. Residents said the format was intended to create a written trail that could be checked by senior civic authorities and used to assess whether action taken on the ground had been sustained.
The listed problems include hawkers and kiosks blocking footpaths, parked vehicles, broken or uneven pavements, permanent structures, inadequate clear walking space, open drains, garbage, construction material, inadequate street lighting and other obstructions. The report card is intended to capture these issues at specific locations rather than treating an entire road as a single enforcement point.
For Bhulabhai Desai Road, residents have divided the stretch into sections, including the areas from Croma to the L&T site, the L&T site to Cymroza Art Gallery, Cymroza to Anand Bhawan and Anand Bhawan to Swaminarayan Mandir. The division is designed to identify the precise location of a pedestrian obstruction and associate it with the relevant action and authority.
In a letter cited in the report, residents said Bhulabhai Desai Road currently has virtually no usable footpath space. They also referred to new footpaths scheduled to be constructed from October 2026, arguing that the purpose of the work would not be achieved unless encroachments were removed and adequate space was designated for licensed hawkers in accordance with BMC guidelines.
A resident said the report card was prepared because action by the local BMC ward office needed to be documented and submitted to senior authorities. The resident said the record should specify what action was taken, against whom it was taken and whether the obstruction had been permanently removed.
The BMC said documentation was already part of its enforcement process. A civic official said photographs were taken whenever action was carried out and that notices were issued wherever required before enforcement. The official also said the corporation was making efforts to prevent those against whom action had been taken from returning to the same location and recreating the problem.
The residents’ submission places ward-level monitoring alongside the BMC’s existing documentation process. The next steps will depend on whether the municipal administration adopts the report card format and how the recorded issues are followed up before and during the planned footpath construction on Bhulabhai Desai Road.
