Explained : How the BMC Mayor Became a Battleground for Mumbai’s Identity and Its Impact

On August 25, 2025, Ameet Satam, the BJP MLA from Andheri West, took charge as Mumbai’s party president. His speech left little doubt about the BJP’s campaign agenda for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. “Who do you want to see as the Mayor of Mumbai?” Satam asked the crowd. “Any Khan? Pathan? Do you want your city painted green or saffron?”

The BJP has been trying to capture Mumbai on its own. Satam’s speech signalled that communal polarisation would anchor the party’s campaign. He invoked Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Party nomination for the New York mayoral race and Sadiq Khan’s tenure as London’s Mayor. “See what is happening in New York, see what is happening in London,” Satam said. “You want Mumbai to follow those steps?”

Satam’s remarks aimed to cast his principal opponents—the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction and Congress—as forces appeasing Muslims. By then, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had announced a pre-poll alliance for the BMC elections.

MNS chief spokesperson Sandip Deshpande responded immediately. “Neither any Khan, nor any Patel or Sharma—Mumbai’s Mayor will be Marathi,” he said. The Thackeray cousins were consolidating Marathi voters.

The campaign for a Marathi Mayor gained traction. BJP strategists realised that pitching a Hindu Mayor alone helped the Thackerays consolidate the Marathi vote. The party first tried to rally non-Marathi voters but soon recognised a problem: with Congress contesting separately, north Indian voters would split between the two parties. Meanwhile, the Marathi Mayor pitch was working for the Thackeray alliance.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis altered the BJP’s slogan: a Marathi Hindu would become Mayor if his party won.

Uddhav, an alliance partner of Congress in the INDIA bloc, buried his differences with Raj and formed a joint front. Congress distanced itself from Uddhav—Raj’s anti-north Indian image threatened the grand old party’s standing in migrant-heavy constituencies. Congress instead allied with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA).

With the BJP pitching a Hindu Mayor and the Thackeray cousins talking Marathi, Congress saw an opening among Dalit voters. Mumbai Congress chief Varsha Gaikwad, who belongs to a Scheduled Caste community, declared that a Marathi Dalit would be Mayor if her party came to power.

Mumbai, Asia’s richest municipality with a budget exceeding Rs.74,000 crore in 2025, is the prize catch for all parties. For BJP, the city would be the final trophy after its thumping victory in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections. For the Thackeray cousins, the battle for Mumbai is existential.

All sides need to stir voters’ emotions. Invoking regional or religious pride is the available option. Yet beyond this contest over the Mayorship, the history of Mumbai’s first citizen runs counter to today’s rhetoric.

Parsis, Muslims, and Marathis built civic Mumbai

Mumbai, then Bombay, established its municipality in 1873. Before that, Justices appointed by the Governor of India oversaw the city’s affairs. In 1873, Pherozeshah Mehta, a Parsi lawyer, became Commissioner. In 1872, Mehta drafted the Bombay Municipal Act, which the British Parliament passed. His statue stands before the BMC office in Fort. Mehta became Chairman of Bombay in 1884, 1885, 1905 and 1911. In 1885, when the Indian National Congress was founded in Bombay, Mehta served as the municipality’s president. He was among the Congress’s founders.

Amendments in 1887 expanded the municipality’s membership and scope. From 1888, the designation changed from Chairman to President, continuing until 1931 when the Mayorship was created. By then, Bombay had expanded in all directions and become India’s financial capital. The question of Marathi versus non-Marathi did not exist. In 1883, Raghunath Narayen Khote served as Chairman. Khote, now largely forgotten, was one of the founders of the Oriental Government Security Life Assurance Company in 1874—India’s first insurance company. After Independence, it became the Oriental Insurance Company.

J.B. Boman-Behram, a figure prominent in Parsi circles and city politics, became Bombay’s first Mayor in 1931. The second Mayor, V.N. Chandavarkar was Marathi, as was the third, M.C. Javle. Both were associated with reformist movements in Maharashtra.

The fourth Mayor, H.M. Rahimtoola, came from one of Bombay’s wealthiest Muslim families. He owned cotton mills—Bombay was then known as Asia’s Manchester. After him came Khurshed Nariman, a Parsi now remembered through Nariman Point, Mumbai’s financial district.

Sultan M. Chinoy, Mayor in 1938, belonged to a Khoja Muslim industrialist family. His father, Mehrallee Chinoy, had built a business empire spanning wheat and cotton. Sultan Chinoy was instrumental in bringing wireless communication to India. In 1921, he travelled to London to secure rights from the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. Returning to Bombay, he gathered the city’s business elite: Parsi industrialist Ness Wadia, Hindu banker Purushottamdas Thakurdas (after whom Thakurdas Market is named), and Ibrahim Rahimtoola, H.M. Rahimtoola’s brother. Together they formed the Indian Radio Telegraph Company (IRTC), India’s first radio company. A Khoja Muslim leading an enterprise financed by Parsis, Hindus, and Muslims to start India’s first wireless communication was itself a story of the city’s character.

The Mayorship was not confined to the wealthy. Yusuf Meherally, a freedom fighter who founded the Congress Socialist Party, became Mayor in 1942. He took office while jailed for the Quit India movement, which began at Gowalia Tank in Bombay. Meherally was known for his fierce anti-imperialist stance. Minoo Masani, later a parliamentarian and leader of the Swatantra Party founded under C. Rajagopalachari’s guidance, served as Mayor in 1944.

Post-Independence changes

After Independence, many industrialist families withdrew from electoral politics. Those who had participated in the freedom movement entered politics through Congress. S. K. Patil, later a Central Minister and reputedly Nehru’s link to Bombay’s industrialists, became Mayor in 1950. George Fernandes defeated him in the 1967 Lok Sabha election—Fernandes’s first parliamentary victory.

A mosaic portrait of the late Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray created using 33,000 rudraksha on the occasion of his 93rd birth anniversary in front of Sena Bhavan in 2019. Bal Thackeray’s entry into Mumbai politics shifted the BMC from civic administration to identity-led control.
| Photo Credit:
Emmanual Yogini / The Hindu

Simon C. Fernandes, a journalist, playwright, and theatre director from Calangute, Goa, became Mayor in 1957. He wrote extensively in Konkani, started The Goa Times from Bombay, and edited The Goan Tribune. Bombay was also a stronghold of India’s Communist movement. S.S. Mirajkar, a trade unionist, became Mayor in 1958. This was the period when Bombay was a battleground for the demand of a Marathi-speaking State.

Bal Thackeray, father of Uddhav and uncle of Raj, founded Shiv Sena in 1966. Hemchandra Gupte became the party’s first Mayor of Bombay in 1971. For the next two and a half decades, Congress and Shiv Sena fought closely for the city. Shiv Sena’s Manohar Joshi served as Mayor; he later became Lok Sabha Speaker during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 1999-2004 tenure and Chief Minister in Maharashtra’s first non-Congress government in 1995. Chhagan Bhujbal also became Mayor in 1985. Murli Deora from Congress held the office in 1977. Since 1996, Shiv Sena has ruled the city continuously, providing Marathi Mayors ever since.

For nearly 90 years after the 1872 Bombay Municipal Act, the city’s Mayorship reflected its cosmopolitan character. These were the years of Bombay’s growth. It became India’s financial capital and a centre of the freedom movement, of Bollywood, of theatre. The prosperity that today’s Mumbai claims rests on the work and enterprise of those decades.

What stands out from that era is this: the core of any activity—business or politics—in Bombay was cosmopolitan. That openness to new ideas while staying rooted in tradition made Mumbai the city of dreams. The politics now being played out over the BMC Mayorship runs against that history.

Also Read | Maharashtra local body election marks BJP’s solo moment

Also Read | Maharashtra is drowning in debt, yet its leaders campaign as if the treasury is bottomless