BMC election expenses slated to surpass ₹175 crore, 30% more than 2017

The civic body has also involved over 4,500 volunteers for crowd management and to help handicapped and senior citizens. Elections are being held in 2,278 locations now as against the barely 300 locations in 2017. Over 22,000 policemen are involved in the polls

Mumbai: The BMC is expected to hugely surpass its 2017 civic election spend of ₹130 crore by more than 30% in the January polls. “This is on account of the increased number of polling booths and employees,” said a senior BMC official. While the 2017 polls had 7,500 employees, there are over 64,375 in this election.

Mumbai…22nd November 2011…News… Bombay Municipal corporation headquarters in Mumbai…HT photo by Hemant Padalkar (Hindustan Times)

The civic body has also involved over 4,500 volunteers for crowd management and to help handicapped and senior citizens. Elections are being held in 2,278 locations now as against the barely 300 locations in 2017. Over 22,000 policemen are involved in the polls.

“The budget is no constraint and we have standing instructions from the commissioner to spend wherever needed,” said an official. The BMC has already completed training for over 80,000 employees in multiple phases, including those kept on standby.

For the first time in a BMC election, the Printing Auxiliary Display Unit (PADU) technology devised by Bharat Electronics Limited will be used as a backup in case the control units fail to function during counting. “The BMC has received 140 such units from the Election Commission (EC),” said municipal commissioner Bhushan Gagrani. “But there is barely a 1% chance of our control units failing.” The BMC will be using 20,000 control units and 25,000 ballot units.

Meanwhile, BMC election squads have seized cash and drugs worth over ₹47 crore as part of the pre-election security operations. These include 55 gm of drugs worth ₹44,95,07237 and ₹3,01,01,720 crore in cash. Besides this, the squads also seized 1,237 litres of alcohol worth ₹8,03,330, 36 illegal firearms, 115 weapons and 52 pieces of ammunition. A majority of the seizures were made in the K East ward.

After receiving 120 applications from political parties to screen digital content, the civic body has filed 29 cases of violation of the electoral code of conduct. However, Gagrani said that no cases had been filed against any party for raking up religious sentiments during campaigning. “We screened their digital content and urged them to drop certain references and words,” he said. “They obliged, and hence no cases were filed.” Gagrani claimed there were no instances of hate speech and thus the violations did not merit cancellation of candidatures.

In the absence of a clear directive from the EC, mobiles have not been banned in polling stations though voters will be discouraged from bringing them or encouraged to keep them on silent mode, said Gagrani.