High-stakes BMC elections, first since Shiv Sena split, to be held on Jan 15
The BMC polls are seen as high-stakes, especially for the Sena (UBT), as it will be the first BMC election after the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena.
Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and 28 other municipal corporations in Maharashtra will be held on January 15, the State Election Commission announced on Friday, with counting scheduled for January 16.
As many as 2,869 seats in these municipal corporations will be up for grabs, said the SEC.
Announcing the much-awaited schedule for the municipal corporation polls at a press conference here, State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare said nomination process will begin on December 23 and go on till December 30.
He said these 29 civic bodies, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), have 2,869 seats on offer and 3.48 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in these major urban centres of the state.
The prominent civic bodies going to polls include Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
‘Vote chori’ row in Maharashtra
The announcement comes amid a growing political row in Mumbai over alleged “vote chori” (vote theft), with opposition parties claiming electoral rolls have been inflated with fictitious and duplicate voters ahead of the crucial civic polls.
The BMC has begun a clean-up of the voters’ list, even as the Shiv Sena (UBT) has launched a parallel, ground-level verification drive across all 227 civic wards.
Sena (UBT) leaders claim their workers have identified thousands of bogus and duplicate entries, arguing that such anomalies could significantly influence the outcome of the elections, which will decide the political and fiscal control of the country’s financial capital.
The party says many long-time residents, particularly Marathi voters, were wrongly marked as “duplicate”, potentially jeopardising their right to vote.
The civic polls are seen as high-stakes, especially for the Sena (UBT), as it will be the first BMC election after the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena and a direct contest with the Eknath Shinde-led faction, which is part of the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra.
