Mumbai has 19,000 named roads. A QR code will tell you who they’re all named after | Mumbai News
4 min readUpdated: Apr 8, 2026 05:16 PM IST
In a bid to raise awareness about Mumbai’s local history the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is set to introduce a proposal of setting up digital museums at public spaces and heritage precincts in Mumbai. These museums will be like digital dashboards that will give out information about prominent personalities after whom a road or any public space is named in Mumbai along with the local history of the place.
The proposal has been pitched by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator – Tejinder Singh Tiwana and is set to be taken up for discussion during the house proceedings later this month.
Speaking with the Indian Express, Tiwana said that the primary idea behind this move is to raise awareness amongst people about the prominent personalities whose contribution towards shaping Mumbai’s culture is not known to many.
“In Mumbai there are roads named after Babasaheb Ambedkar and Shivaji Mahraj and citizens are well aware about their history. But there are also personalities like Kavi VR Kant — there is a road in my constituency named after him but not many people know much about him. Therefore, the objective behind this project is to bring in light the prominence of these lesser known eminent personalities and raise awareness about their contribution amongst the people,” Tiwana told the Indian Express.
According to Tiwana’s notice of motion recorded in the civic house’s agenda for this month, all the road name plates will be fitted with a QR code.
In Mumbai all the junctions, public spaces and roads have a blue board installed over them, which displays the name of the place. The proposal states that the QR codes will be fitted in these boards. Since Mumbai’s Municipal Corporation (MMC) act mandates that roads and public spaces should be named after personalities who have played a key role in shaping Mumbai, almost every road and bylane is named after scholars, freedom fighters and poets, social workers among others. According to the civic records there are 19,000 roads that are named after unique personalities in Mumbai.
Therefore, the citizens will be able to scan the QR code which will redirect them to an AI powered dashboard where the information related to the personalities will be available through animation and short videos. Tiwana also stated that these QR codes will also provide the local history of a particular area in Mumbai.
Story continues below this ad
Meanwhile a senior official from BMC’s road department stated that several areas in Mumbai like Cotton Green are named after cotton since these places were hubs of mills that made the area green in terms of wealth.
The officials also stated that several roads are also named after their daily usage. For example, the Bread Lane, in Crawford Market was named as it had a large number of bakeries that supplied bread to the ships in the Bombay Harbour.
“For example, if anybody is at Haji Ali, then he or she can scan the QR available in the nearest road name plate and generate an idea about the entire Haji Ali area, its history and reason for prominence,” Tiwana said.
Prior to this the BMC had proposed a similar plan back in 2021 with an NGO, however the plan didn’t took off. The civic authorities said that in order to make this plan work they will have to rope in city historians for mapping the history of Mumbai into one digital dashboard.
