Kudalkar hopes voters will reward his work

KURLA CONSTITUENCY | A reserved seat with a diverse population, Kurla has been plagued by lack of green spaces, congestion

- Manoi Ramakrishnan

The Kurla assembly constituency, No 174, is one of the two seats in the city reserved for Scheduled Caste (SC) candidates. The constituency, with around 2,97,000 voters, sprawls between Chunabhatti near Sion and Pestom Sagar-Tilak Nagar in Chembur, apart from localities such as Nehru Nagar, Sable Nagar, Sahakar Nagar (Shell Colony), Kamgar Nagar in Kurla (East) and Kurla (West).

The constituency is demographically diverse, with hilltop slums, working-class tenements, and middle and upper middle-class localities. The area has a concentration of Dalits and Muslims. The constituency was reserved for Scheduled Castes after the 2008 delimitation. The assembly segment is part of the Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha seat won by Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate Varsha Gaikwad of the Congress in the 2024 parliamentary election.

The Shiv Sena (Shinde)'s Mangesh Kudalkar, the sitting MLA, has represented the constituency for the last two terms. In 2019, Kudalkar won the seat on a Shiv Sena (undivided) ticket. He received 55,049 votes. His nearest rival, the NCP's Milind Kamble, received 34,036 votes.

Kudalkar is said to be 'accessible' though there are charges that he has been of not much help during the recent agitation to conserve the partially forested Kurla Dairy plot as a recreational space. Kudalkar, who has been a resident of Kurla, has been ranked 15 among 29 MLAs from the city in Praja Foundation's 'Mumbai Report Card: MLA Rating 2024'.