Voting began across 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra on Thursday morning, where 3.48 crore voters will decide the fate of 15,931 candidates.
The spotlight, however, remains on high-stakes Mumbai, where the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance battles the reunited Thackeray cousins for control of India’s largest and richest civic body.
Polling began at 7.30 a.m. for 2,869 seats spread across 893 wards in these municipal corporations, and will conclude at 5.30 pm. Heavy security has been deployed in all voting areas, with more than 25,000 police personnel on duty.
In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), whose annual budget is over ₹74, 400 crore, 1,700 candidates are vying for 227 seats. The elections here are being held after nine years, after a four-year delay. Except for Mumbai, the other urban bodies have multi-member wards.
Vote count will take place on January 16.
These polls also hold importance for being the first BMC polls since the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena when Eknath Shinde, now Deputy Chief Minister, broke away with a majority of the party’s MLAs and allied with the BJP to become the chief minister.
Also Read: The big tie-up: BJP, Cong, AIMIM announce alliance in Ambernath
While the undivided Shiv Sena held sway over India’s richest civic body for 25 years (1997-2022) under the aegis of Bal Thackeray, the polls this year brought estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, who head Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS, respectively, together after two decades in their bid to consolidate Marathi votes even as rival NCP factions forged a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
The grand old Congress party, once a formidable political force in Maharashtra, has asserted its presence in Mumbai by stepping out of the shadow of its Maha Vikas Aghadi allies – Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) – and joined hands with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh in the state capital.
Elections to the 29 municipal corporations are being held after a gap of several years, with terms of most of them having ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine fall in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the most urbanised belt in India.
Voting is underway in the following municipal corporations: Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayandar, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.
Follow us
