Congress seeks cancellation of PPP tender for Bhagwati Hospital in Borivali, wants BMC to run it

Former Mumbai Congress president and MLA Bhai Jagtap and Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee general secretary Adv. Sandesh Kondvilkar have demanded that the tender to have the 490-bed Bhagwati Hospital in Borivali run by a private entity under a public-private partnership (PPP) be cancelled immediately. In a letter to the Chief Minister and the municipal commissioner, they said the hospital should be operated and managed by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai itself.

According to the letter, the civic body issued the tender on October 26, 2026, and the last date is November 16. Jagtap and Kondvilkar said that under Section 61 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, providing health services to citizens is the corporation's legal responsibility. They asked why there was an insistence on handing this responsibility to private entities.

The Congress leaders recalled that the party had strongly opposed privatisation in 2025 as well. At the pre-bid meeting on March 24, 2025, Adv. Kondvilkar, Adv. Ashok Sutrale and other office-bearers had taken a firm stand. On March 26, Ambadas Danve, then Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, MLA Bhai Jagtap and MLA Sunil Prabhu raised the issue in the legislature. Thousands of citizens also registered their opposition by email.

The letter states that on April 8, 2025, a delegation led by Danve met the then municipal commissioner and demanded that privatisation be scrapped. On August 6, 2025, at a meeting with a delegation led by Jagtap, the then commissioner, Bhushan Gagrani, said the PPP proposal had been cancelled. He also assured them that preparations for staff and equipment were under way and that the hospital would start in four months. According to the letter, the decision is also recorded in the minutes of a corporation meeting.

On this basis, Jagtap and Kondvilkar asked why the present administration has issued a tender for privatisation again, under whose pressure the decision was taken, and which private or religious institution is being given the hospital. They demanded that the administration disclose this.

On the tender conditions, the letter says eligibility as the corporation's patients has been given only to civic employees, retired employees, their families, corporators and holders of yellow and saffron ration cards. As a result, lakhs of poor and middle-class families with annual income above Rs 1 lakh could be denied subsidised health care.

The letter also points to the financial side. The corporation will receive only Rs 6.5 crore a year in rent, while it will have to pay the operating entity about Rs 60 crore for treating eligible civic patients. The leaders said that by giving a public asset to a private entity, the corporation is in effect being burdened with crores of rupees. They asked what benefit this holds for the people of Mumbai.

They also said two private hospitals with about 3,000 beds in total are being built in North Mumbai, and asked who would then provide free or low-cost treatment to the poor, labourers and the middle class. They asked whether a corporation with deposits of thousands of crores of rupees is not capable of running its own hospital. In their view, instead of privatisation, doctors, nurses, staff and modern medical equipment should be arranged and the hospital started at full capacity.

The Congress has placed five demands. First, the PPP tender for Bhagwati Hospital should be cancelled immediately. Second, the corporation should itself operate and manage the hospital. Third, the necessary staff and medical equipment should be provided at once. Fourth, poor, middle-class and working citizens should get free or low-cost health care. Fifth, the reasons for issuing a tender after earlier cancelling the privatisation proposal should be made public.

MLA Bhai Jagtap and Adv. Sandesh Kondvilkar warned that Bhagwati Hospital belongs to the people of Mumbai and not to a private entity's profit. In their words, privatising public health services and playing with the common people's right to health will not be allowed, and the Congress will continue its struggle for the corporation to run the hospital.