Last updated: 23 September 2026. Every count refreshed from the live eCourtsIndia index on 23 September 2026 (the first edition used 8 May 2026 data). Corrections in this edition: the Versova-Bandra Sea Link is an MSRDC project, not a BMC one, and has been removed; the BMC-as-plaintiff analysis has been re-run and reversed for civil suits; an unsourced budget-circular claim has been dropped.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is named in 44,187 indexed court records on eCourtsIndia as of 23 September 2026, with 16,830 pending and 26,321 disposed. About two-thirds of that docket sits at the Bombay High Court, and in roughly nine cases out of ten BMC is the party being sued, not the one suing.
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, better known as BMC or MCGM, runs a budget larger than several Indian states: Rs 74,427 crore in 2025-26 and Rs 80,952.56 crore proposed for 2026-27, as reported when the budget was tabled in February 2026. A body that big does not move quietly through public life. It demolishes, regulates, taxes, employs, contracts, encroaches and gets encroached upon. Every one of those functions creates a paper trail, and a meaningful share of that paper trail ends up in court.
How big is that share? On 23 September 2026, a single litigant search on eCourtsIndia for “Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai” returned 44,187 court records, up from 42,357 when this post first ran in May. A separate search for the naming variant “Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation” returned another 2,602. The two overlap, so read 44,000+ as the floor for the BMC docket. This post takes that pile apart. For the state-wide view of every major Maharashtra government body, read the companion Maharashtra Litigation Census.
Key takeaways
- 44,187 court records name the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (23 September 2026); 38.1 percent are pending.
- About 67 percent of the docket sits at the Bombay High Court, split between the Appellate Side (19,293) and the Original Side (10,395).
- Civil writ petitions are the largest bucket at 10,828. BMC is the petitioner in only 512 of them.
- Fresh filings nearly doubled in 2023 (4,660, from 2,536 in 2022) and have stayed near that level since: 3,777 in 2024 and 4,194 in 2025.
- You can track any BMC matter, or BMC as a litigant, with litigant search and WhatsApp or email alerts.
How we counted
Every number in this post comes from the eCourtsIndia index, pulled on 23 September 2026. The headline volume is a single litigant search for “Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai” at ecourtsindia.com/litigant. Court venue, case type, status and filing-year breakdowns come from the facets on that same search, and the contempt and arbitration slices from the same search filtered to those case types. The plaintiff-versus-defendant split comes from repeating the search with the name in the petitioner field only. We used the same method in the Ministry Litigation Index and the PSU Litigation Index. Anyone can re-run the totals in a minute.
One footnote on naming. The BMC carries two formal English names in court papers. “Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai” is the statute-anchored phrasing used in most cause titles and orders. “Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation” is the contemporary masthead. Both are live in the index. We use the larger of the two as the headline number throughout.
Where BMC actually litigates: the courtroom map
Of the 44,187 records, the lion’s share sits at the Bombay High Court. The Appellate Side (HCBM01) holds 19,293 matters and the Original Side (HCBM02) another 10,395. The City Civil Court at Mumbai holds 8,560, and the Supreme Court 1,164. Smaller clusters sit at the Small Causes Court (1,314), the Labour Court (1,190), the Dindoshi civil court (724), the metropolitan magistrate courts and the Industrial Court (407).
| Court | Code | BMC records |
|---|---|---|
| Bombay HC, Appellate Side | HCBM01 | 19,293 |
| Bombay HC, Original Side | HCBM02 | 10,395 |
| City Civil Court, Mumbai | MHCC01 | 8,560 |
| Small Causes Court, Mumbai | MHSCA2 | 1,314 |
| Labour Court, Mumbai | MHLC01 | 1,190 |
| Supreme Court of India | SCIN01 | 1,164 |
| Civil Court, Dindoshi | MHCC04 | 724 |
| Industrial Court, Mumbai | MHIC01 | 407 |
Two takeaways. First, about two-thirds of BMC’s litigation footprint is at the Bombay High Court itself. Most state agencies push the bulk of their disputes through subordinate courts and tribunals; BMC’s writ exposure pulls its docket up to the constitutional court. Second, the City Civil Court figure (8,560) shows that despite the High Court tilt, BMC also carries a substantial civil-suit docket in the regular courts, and as the plaintiff-versus-defendant section below shows, it is almost always the defendant there.
What BMC fights about: the case-type fingerprint
The case-type breakdown is the most useful single view of the work BMC does in court. Here is how the largest buckets split:
| Case type | What it is, in plain English | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Writ Petition (Civil) | Citizens or businesses challenging BMC orders, demolition notices, tax demands and service decisions | 10,828 |
| First Appeal | Appeals against decrees from subordinate courts, mostly property and recovery suits | 8,161 |
| Not yet classified | Records where the court feed has not assigned a case type | 8,018 |
| Civil Appeal | Civil appeals at High Court and Supreme Court level | 5,353 |
| Civil Suit | Original suits in the civil courts, where BMC is almost always the defendant | 4,075 |
| Interlocutory Application | Stay, injunction and procedural applications inside larger matters | 3,755 |
| Special Leave Petition (Civil) | Petitions seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court | 825 |
| Rent Control Case | Disputes over tenancies and protected occupiers | 533 |
| Contempt Petition | A party alleging BMC has not complied with a court order | 251 |
| Public Interest Litigation | Citizen-led PILs on civic services, encroachment, public health and planning | 188 |
| Arbitration Petition | Contractor and vendor disputes in or around arbitration | 118 |
The fingerprint is unmistakable. Civil writ petitions are the largest bucket, 10,828 of them. A writ against a municipal corporation almost always means a citizen, a builder, a hawker, a tenant or a contractor has gone to the High Court arguing that a BMC decision was arbitrary, illegal or in breach of natural justice. First appeals (8,161) and civil appeals (5,353) together come to 13,514, the appellate tail of property, recovery and contract disputes. About 8,000 records carry no case type yet, which is a data-quality gap in the court feeds rather than a category of dispute. For the codes themselves, see the case type encyclopedia.
The fresh-filings trend: 2023 was the spike year
The most operationally interesting view is the year-by-year filing trend. Here is what the index shows for fresh filings naming BMC:
Three things stand out. The 2023 number is nearly double 2022. Plausible drivers include building-permission and redevelopment writs after the post-pandemic construction restart, disputes around large BMC projects such as the Coastal Road, and the release of matters that had piled up while courts ran reduced lists during the pandemic; the index shows the jump, but not its cause. The level then settles at a permanently higher floor: 2024 and 2025 each cleared 3,700 fresh filings, well above the pre-pandemic baseline. The 2026 count of 1,926 is a partial year and will rise as recent filings are indexed, so we have not projected it.
The pendency tail: how much of the docket is unresolved
Of the 44,187 BMC records, 16,830 are flagged pending and 26,321 disposed. Smaller buckets include 441 dismissed, 297 admitted, 89 dismissed as withdrawn, 89 at hearing and 33 allowed, with a thin tail of other statuses. The pending share works out to 38.1 percent. For a body that litigates at this scale, a 38 percent live-case ratio is the operating cost of running a city the size of Mumbai through the courts. The case status dictionary explains what each status means.
The most useful pendency signal is the contempt curve. Contempt petitions are filed when a party says BMC has not complied with an earlier court order, so they are a clean proxy for institutional non-compliance. Filtering BMC’s docket to contempt petitions returns 251, of which 98 are pending. The longest-running contempt matter we examined took 3,254 days, just under nine years, from filing to disposal: CNR HCBM020168092015, filed on 10 September 2015 against MCGM and disposed on 7 August 2024. Contempt matters concentrate at the Original Side of the Bombay High Court (HCBM02), which holds 216 of the 251.
The arbitration trail: contractor and vendor disputes
BMC awards thousands of crores in contracts every year for roads, water mains, drainage, solid waste, hospitals and schools. When those contracts go wrong, the disputes surface as arbitration petitions, typically under Section 11 or Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996. The index shows 118 BMC arbitration petitions, of which 45 are pending. Eighty-two of them are at the Original Side of the Bombay High Court, the usual seat for commercial arbitration in Mumbai.
The filing curve is small and lumpy: 16 arbitration petitions in 2022, 13 in 2023, 7 each in 2024 and 2025, and 5 so far in 2026. A recent pending example is CNR HCBM020087132026, filed by Suez Projects Pvt Ltd against MCGM in March 2026. A disposed example is CNR HCBM020355822015, MCGM against Clear Channel Mumbai, filed in December 2015 and disposed in September 2018 after 1,002 days.
BMC as plaintiff vs as defendant
The first edition of this post said BMC was mostly the plaintiff in civil suits. When we re-ran the numbers with the name in the petitioner field only, that turned out to be wrong, and we have corrected it. Across the whole docket, BMC is the petitioner in 3,910 of 44,187 records, under 9 percent. In civil writs it files 512 of 10,828. In civil suits it is the plaintiff in just 10 of 4,075; in the rest it is the defendant, usually sued by occupiers, contractors or property owners. Arbitration is the most balanced slice: BMC is the petitioner in 41 of the 118 arbitration petitions, about 35 percent. Contempt is one-sided by definition, with BMC as respondent.
| Slice | All records | BMC as petitioner | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whole docket | 44,187 | 3,910 | 9% |
| Writ Petition (Civil) | 10,828 | 512 | 5% |
| Civil Suit | 4,075 | 10 | Under 1% |
| Arbitration Petition | 118 | 41 | 35% |
What this docket says about how Mumbai is governed
Three threads pull together when you stand back from the data.
First, 44,000+ indexed cases do not by themselves make BMC unusually litigious; any civic body of this size carries a large docket. What stands out is the High Court tilt. About two-thirds of the BMC docket sits at the Bombay High Court, which says something specific about Mumbai: writ jurisdiction is the default route citizens use to push back on the corporation.
Second, BMC is overwhelmingly a defendant. Nine records in ten have someone else as the petitioner. That changes how to read the docket: it is less a measure of BMC chasing its dues than a measure of how often its decisions, contracts and properties are challenged.
Third, the contempt and arbitration trails are small but telling. Contempt counts are low (251), yet individual matters can run for close to a decade. Arbitration counts are low too (118), but each matter tends to involve a large contract. Both are the procedural trace of disputes the corporation did not settle administratively. The same pattern shows up across the state in the Maharashtra Litigation Census, and among central bodies in the PSU Litigation Index.
How to replicate every number, and track BMC yourself
Every figure here can be re-pulled in under a minute. Open litigant search, enter “Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai” and read the total. Use the case-type filter to slice into writs, contempt, arbitration or PILs, and the filing-year filter to rebuild the trend. Searching is free. The same data is available through the self-serve eCourtsIndia API (23 endpoints, Rs 200 of free credits on signup), and our explainer From Scrape to SLA covers the data layer behind it.
If you are a contractor, a property owner or a lawyer with a live matter against BMC, add the case to tracking and switch on WhatsApp and email alerts so you hear when an order, hearing date or status changes; our case alerts guide shows how. Tracking costs Rs 5 per case per month and each alert Rs 0.50. For Bombay High Court and City Civil Court listings, the free cause list search tells you when a BMC matter is on the board, and our guide on how to read a cause list decodes what you see.
What we are watching
The numbers most worth watching are fresh filings each year as a measure of citizen and contractor friction, the pending contempt count as a measure of order compliance, the open arbitration count as a measure of contractor exposure, and the High Court share as a measure of whether disputes can be resolved lower down. For comparable views, see the Maharashtra Litigation Census, the Ministry Litigation Index and our look at cheque bounce cases under Section 138. If you want a specific BMC department, ward or contractor cluster broken out, write to us at admin@ecourtsindia.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many court cases does the BMC have?
As of 23 September 2026, a litigant search on eCourtsIndia returned 44,187 court records naming the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, with another 2,602 under the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation name. The two overlap, so 44,000+ is the floor for the BMC docket. About 38 percent of these records are pending. You can re-run the count yourself with the eCourtsIndia litigant search.
Which court hears the most BMC cases?
About two-thirds of BMC litigation sits at the Bombay High Court. The Appellate Side holds 19,293 BMC records and the Original Side 10,395, as of 23 September 2026. The City Civil Court in Mumbai adds 8,560 and the Supreme Court 1,164. You can open any of these venues, filtered to BMC, through eCourtsIndia case search.
What does BMC fight about most in court?
Civil writ petitions are BMC’s largest bucket at 10,828: citizens, builders, tenants and contractors challenging civic decisions as arbitrary or illegal. First appeals (8,161) and civil appeals (5,353) form the appellate tail of property and recovery disputes, and there are 4,075 civil suits. The case type encyclopedia explains each code used in the docket.
How many BMC cases are still pending?
Of 44,187 indexed records, 16,830 are pending and 26,321 are disposed, a pending share of 38.1 percent as of 23 September 2026. There are 251 contempt petitions against BMC, 98 of them pending, and the longest-running one we examined took 3,254 days from filing to disposal. The same method underpins our Ministry Litigation Index.
When did BMC court filings spike?
Fresh filings naming BMC nearly doubled in 2023, to 4,660 from 2,536 in 2022, and have stayed at a higher floor since: 3,777 in 2024 and 4,194 in 2025. The index shows the jump but not its cause. You can rebuild the year-by-year series for any litigant using the filing-year filter in the eCourtsIndia litigant search.
Is BMC usually the plaintiff or the defendant?
Mostly the defendant. BMC is the petitioner in only 3,910 of its 44,187 records, under 9 percent. It files just 512 of 10,828 civil writs and 10 of 4,075 civil suits. Arbitration is the most balanced slice, with BMC as petitioner in 41 of 118 petitions. You can repeat this check with the petitioner filter in eCourtsIndia search.