Civic polls in five towns on April 15

Five towns of Maharashtra will elect their municipal corporations on April 15.

Five towns of Maharashtra will elect their municipal corporations on April 15.

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These include Mumbai’s satellite town Bhiwandi and Malegaon near Nashik. The other three towns — Latur, Chandrapur and Parbhani — will have their first municipal corporation elections, after their civic bodies were recently promoted to the corporation rank.

Counting will take place on April 16.

Many state politicians are expected to skip the budget session of the state legislature as the dates for the poll procedure clash with the session, which begins March 15.

Bhiwandi and Malegaon, towns with a history of communal clashes, will see a fight between the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Shiv Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

The election in Latur, a Congress stronghold, will be a matter of prestige for union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, while Chandrapur is the hometown of state BJP president Sudhir Mungantiwar.