BMC building gets poll-eve makeover

A worker cleans the Mayor’s chair at the official bungalow in Mumbai on Wednesday. (Amit Chakravarty)

From the Mayor’s majestic teakwood chair to the painted glass windows and tiled floors inside an iconic heritage hall, the 132-year-old building where Mumbai’s future will be decided is being returned to its past glory with just hours to go for the long-awaited elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Over the past month, 25 workers have been working 24/7 in shifts, polishing, cleaning and painting all the key offices, committee rooms, corridors and the heritage hall inside the BMC headquarters in South Mumbai.

The restoration follows a prolonged lull in the city’s civic functioning. The last council of elected representatives was dissolved in March 2022 after local body elections were deferred following a Supreme Court directive mandating a “rigorous empirical inquiry” before implementing OBC reservations in civic polls. The delay was extended by the reorganisation of municipal ward boundaries.

All this while, the corporation hall, the standing committee rooms, and the offices of the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and committee chairpersons, inside the BMC base remained locked. This marked the first time since 1893, when the Victorian-Gothic buil­ding was built and opened for use, that these spaces were shut for such a long stretch—althou­gh some offices like that of the deputy Mayor were used as temporary offices for election work.

“If you keep a room shut for four years and open it one day, there is going to be some kind of deterioration in the property due to lack of maintenance. We are identifying those issues and carrying out a complete refurbishment before the elected representatives take over their offices,” said a senior BMC official about the work being carried out by the corporation’s heritage conservation cell.

When The Indian Express visited the imposing building Tuesday, craftsmen were at work on first floor, polishing teak, brushing gold-leafed ceilings and restoring objects inside the corporation hall built in 1893. Before this landmark structure existed, Mumbai’s civic administration functioned from the Army Navy Building at Kala Ghoda.

Today, the hall remains the nerve centre of the city’s governance. At the heart of the rectangular chamber stands a raised dais bearing the Mayor’s chair. Around it curves a semicircular seating arrangement for 227 corporators. This is where arguments will be raised, points of order contested, and civic policies take shape.

Architecturally, the hall borrows inspiration from town halls in Glasgow and Birmingham. Above, moulded panels of Burma teak wood stretch across the ceiling, their surfaces finished in gold leaf. Underfoot lie Minton tiles, while three chandeliers—dating back to the colonial era—hang overhead, illuminating busts of figures repres­en­ting Mumbai’s diverse communities, each engraved with the initials “CB” for Corporation of Bombay.

Vikas Dilawari, a conservation architect who had restored the hall after a fire damaged some of its portions in 2001, said it “earlier had stained glass, which is now replaced by an apsidal window”—located within a polygonal or hexagonal curved wall. Years of closure had taken a toll, with layers of dust on furniture and dulled wooden ceilings. “Since these rooms were shut for so many years, termite infestations were found in a few places. Immediate pest treatment was initiated,” the civic official said.

One of the most symbolic elements under restoration is the Mayor’s chair itself. Crafted from teakwood, it features cushions bearing the BMC’s coat of arms—a lion atop a four-panel shield, a blooming lotus below, and the Sanskrit motto “Yato Dharmastato Jayah” (Where there is dharma, there will be victory) etched in gold. Years of disuse had allowed fungus to form on cushioning, which is now being replaced, while the wooden frame is refinished.

The chair carries a tradition unique to Mumbai’s civic legacy: as “first citizen”, an elected Mayor does not sit on any other seat while in the BMC building.