The government of Maharashtra, a state in the western India, is an elected government with 288 members in legislative assembly for the period of five years. Government of Maharashtra is comprised of 27 cabinet ministers and 10 ministers of state. Presently in 2012 Government of Maharashtra ruled by Congress party and chief minister Shree Prithviraj Chavan elected in November 2010 and governor is Mr. Kateekal Sankaranarayanan.
Local government of Maharashtra has the same general structure as of the local governance in India and is broadly categorized into, urban local government and rural local government.
Urban local Maharashtra Government
Urban local government further categorized into Municipal Corporation and municipal council.
Municipal Corporation governs the urban areas which are further divided into wards. Individual wards or group of wards have their separate governing body called as ward communities. There are 26 municipal corporations in Maharashtra which are- Mumbai, Thane, Mira-Bhayandar, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Vasai-Virar, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Kolhapur, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Solapur, Ahmednagar, Nashik, Malegaon, Jalgaon, Dhule, Aurangabad, Nanded-Waghala, Parbhani city, Latur, Akola, Amravati, Nagpur and Chandrapur.
Municipal council governs the smaller urban areas which can also be called as municipalities. Similarly municipal council are divided into wards and their respective ward council. Currently in Maharashtra there are 222 municipal councils.
Rural local Maharashtra Government
Like all the states of India rural government of Maharashtra is also based on Panchayati Raj system. This is 3 tier systems with Zila Parishad at the district level, blocks as the middle level and village council at the village level.
Zilla parishad works at the district level and it look after the rural areas of the districts. There are 33 Zilla parishad in Maharashtra, one each in every district.
Panchayat samiti works at the tehsil or taluka level. There are 355 panchayat samitis or block panchayat in Maharashtra.
They are also called as developmental blocks and workds between the various villages of the tehsil. They are the links between the Gram Panchayat and Zilla Parishad.
Gram panchayat works at the village level.There are 28813 gram panchayat in Maharashtra. Gram panchayat can work for a single village (ex. Village with more than 500 people) and also as group-gram panchayat for the 2 or more small villages.
Maharashtra government is well organized governmental system in which all the departments work in a synchronized way. Maharashtra is the state with the capital city Mumbai which is known to be the financial capital of India. The economy of Maharashtra is highest in India with 10.5. This is all because of the proper functioning of all the departments of Maharashtra government.
As precautions from scams, like the recent Adarsh society scam, government of Maharashtra has adopted online recruitment system for MPSC, Police, District and for other services.
Maharashtra is the first state to have its own e-governance policy to make all government services available to the citizens of India via electronic media. The target of the Maharashtra government is to bring 100 services online in one year to make the public closer to the government.
Maharashtra is one of the very important states of government of India. Hence it’s a very honourable thing for us if Maharashtra is number one state of India in development and improvements.