Meet Mumbai's First Woman Chief Leading A Rs750 Billion Civic Body With 160-Year History

2026-04-03 11:16:32

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) India's financial and commercial capital got its first woman municipal commissioner in its 160-year history, when Ashwini Bhide, a veteran Indian administrative service officer, recently took over as the head of the civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Bhide, known as 'metro woman', implemented the city's first metro project. She will also hold the additional post of managing director, Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation.

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Bhide joins two other women who have key positions in the civic body: Ritu Tawde, who is the mayor of the city, and Kishori Pednekar, a former mayor and now leader of the opposition in the corporation.

Incidentally, Maharashtra had its first woman director-general of police, Rashmi Shukla, who retired from the top police post in January 2026. The state had also appointed its first woman chief secretary, Sujata Saunik, who took over in June 2024 and retired a year later.

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Speaking to the media, Bhide recalled that she had spent four crucial years in Mumbai's municipal corporation including during Covid.“These have been an invaluable experience for me,” she said.“I look forward to navigating new challenges with my team and building on the work of my predecessors.”

The BMC is the richest civic body in India with a budget of Rs750 billion (nearly Dh30 billion), which is more than the budget of some smaller states including Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. Other civic bodies in India have substantially smaller budgets. They include Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune and Surat.

But the fact that it took so long for the country's richest and premier civic body to get a woman heading it has surprised many. Author and TV personality Rajdeep Sardesai said on his 'X' post:“Good news today: Mumbai gets its first woman municipal commissioner.: Mumbai's 'infra woman' @AshwiniBhide. That it's taken so long tells you all you need to know about how male-dominated our society remains. All the best ma'am, Mumbai maange more!”

Incidentally, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation also got its first woman commissioner last month when the Election Commission appointed Smita Pandey as the executive head of the civic body before elections to the state assembly.

In February 2026, G. Srijana was appointed by the Telangana government as the commissioner of the newly formed Cyberabad Municipal Corporation. She was earlier the additional commissioner at the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

Women heading civic bodies as commissioners also face problems, especially in smaller towns. Amrutha Gowda, the municipal commissioner of Sidlaghatta in Karnataka was threatened in January 2026 by a Congress leader, who warned of setting her office on fire and getting her beaten.

According to media reports, B.V. Rajeev Gowda, the politician, also abused the woman commissioner after she got an illegal banner, promoting a film by the son of a minister, after the public complained to her about it.

“I was a software engineer and my husband lives abroad,” Amrutha, who was almost in tears, told the media after the incident.“But I left a good package and became a Karnataka Administrative Service officer to serve people. In my five years of service, nobody has spoken to me like this,” she said. The police later booked Rajeev Gowda.