Civic polls in Mumbai, 28 other cities on Jan 15

The results of the elections will be announced on January 16, when the counting of votes will take place

MUMBAI: Elections to 29 municipal corporations in the state – including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) – will be held on January 15, 2026. Also going to the polls are the municipal corporations in Thane, Navi Mumbai, Nagpur, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar and Pune.

Dinesh Waghmare, Maharashtra State Election Commissioner(C) addressing to the media, during announcement of the scheduled elections of 29 municipal corporations across the state, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), at Sahyadri Guest house in Mumbai. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

HT graphics.

The announcement was made by state election commissioner, Dinesh Waghmare, on Monday. The results of the elections will be announced on January 16, when the counting of votes will take place.

HT graphics.

Waghmare also addressed the issue of “duplicate” voters, which has raised serious concerns after being flagged by opposition parties. He said the process of identifying these “suspected duplicate” voters and taking an undertaking from them will continue until 48 hours prior to voting. He said there are about 1.5 million “suspected duplicate” voters in these 29 municipal corporations, 1.1 million in Mumbai alone.

Only electronic voting machines will be used; there will be no voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT), he said.

The elections will see 35% of voters in Maharashtra – 34.87 million of the 98.4 million voters registered in the state – exercising their franchise.

These elections are significant also because they have been long delayed. Petitions challenging caste-based reservation in local bodies have been pending in the Supreme Court for over five years, which had led to a stay on polls in local bodies across Maharashtra.

The court has resumed these hearings, lifting the stay but is yet to deliver a final verdict. In the absence of elected representatives, municipal corporations were governed by IAS officers, who were appointed as administrators.

Barring two municipal corporations – Ichalkaranji and Jalna – which were established recently, the remaining 27 civic bodies have been governed by administrators for more than three years. Five municipal corporations – Kalyan-Dombivali, Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai and Kolhapur – have had no elected body for five years, while 17 municipal corporations including Mumbai, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, have been under administrators for more than three years.

This will be the second phase of elections to local bodies in Maharashtra. The phase, which covered more than 264 municipal councils and nagar panchayats, was held on December 2. The results of these elections will be announced on December 21.

The third phase of local body polls – 12 district councils and the panchayat samitis under them, will be held in the last week of January.

Nine municipal corporations in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which accounts for over 20% of the state’s population, will go to the polls on January 15. Apart from their political significance, these civic bodies are financially important too, as the collective budget of these nine bodies for FY2025-26 is ₹101,698 crore. The BMC’s budget is the largest, a colossal ₹74,427 crore for the ongoing fiscal, while the other eight bodies have budgets ranging between ₹989 crore (Ulhasnagar) and ₹5,685 crore (Navi Mumbai). The consolidated budget of these nine corporations in the MMR is over 14% of the size of the state’s budget, which is ₹7.57 lakh crore.

Balance of power

Local body polls are considered mini-assembly elections. Although no elections in municipal corporations were held after December 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had bagged the highest number of seats – 1,099 of 2,736 seats in 27 corporations that went to the polls between 2015 and 2018. This further consolidated its authority in Maharashtra, where the BJP formed the government in the state for the first time in 2014.

In other words, the BJP emerged as the largest party in terms of number of seats and number of municipal corporations in the state. The Shiv Sena was in second place, with 489 seats; the Congress at 439 and undivided NCP at 294 seats.

“Holding power in municipal corporations and other urban and rural local bodies helps political parties strengthen themselves at the grassroots. In turn, this helps parties win state- and national-level elections,” said a senior BJP leader.

‘Duplicate’ voters

Besides the political slugfest, the issue of “suspected duplicate” voters in the municipal elections are expected to be the key issue. Waghmare said that over 1.5 million voters are “suspected duplicate” voters in these bodies, and the procedure to identify them is underway. “The percentage of these “duplicate” voters is between 7% and 20%, and the process of marking their names with two stars (to identify them) is underway. We are ensuring that they do not vote in more than one polling station, and for this, we will secure an undertaking from them, declaring their choice of polling station to vote. If we cannot take such an undertaking, these voters with repeated entries will be flagged in the voters’ list at the booth level. This process may go on till 48 hours prior to voting,” he said.

Waghmare also said the VVPAT system will not be used in the municipal corporation elections as there is no such mandate in the law. The multi-member ward system in corporations, excluding the BMC, was another reason it was not feasible.

The Supreme Court last month allowed the state election commission (SEC) to hold municipal corporation elections, including the two corporations that have exceeded the 50% cap on caste-based reservations. The two corporations are Chandrapur and Nagpur, and their results will be subject to the final outcome of the petitions pending in the apex court.

Chief minister Devendra Fadavis said he had no doubt voters would favour the BJP. “We have been working for the development of the state and I am sure the people will stand by our development agenda. I am sure we will win most of the bodies. I am happy the elections are taking place. In a democracy, civic bodies should not be governed by an administrator but the elections were stalled because of the SC ruling,” he said.

Jayant Patil, leader of the opposition NCP (SP), claimed the SEC was in a hurry to conduct the polls. “The counting of votes for the first phase of local body polls is yet to be concluded. The SEC had to postpone the elections to some bodies, leading to the postponement of the counting of votes. The second phase of elections has been announced by the SEC when even the first has not concluded.”

Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe accused the SEC of colluding with the BJP. “There has been an uproar over the ‘theft of votes’ and we have proved how votes are stolen by the ruling party. The SEC has not been able to weed out bogus voters from the electoral rolls, despite which elections to municipal corporations have been announced,” he said.