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State Bureau Mumbai. Elections for the Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the country's financial capital, are going to be held on Thursday after a delay of almost four years. BMC has been in control of Shiv Sena for the last 30 years.
Now after the split of Shiv Sena, Shiv Sena (UBT) President Uddhav Thackeray again wants to retain his control over this municipal corporation with the largest budget of the country. Whereas in the last elections, Bharatiya Janata Party was only two seats behind him, after the assembly, now it seems determined to oust him from Mumbai Municipal Corporation also.
Elections for Mumbai Municipal Corporation are being held after eight years and 11 months. Voting for the 2017 BMC elections took place on February 21, 2017. Then, undivided Shiv Sena fought separately and got 84 seats and BJP got 82 seats.
Now the circumstances have completely changed. The two big parties of the state, Shiv Sena and NCP, have split. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who left Shiv Sena and called his Shiv Sena as the real Shiv Sena, is contesting the BMC elections this time in alliance with BJP, while Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's NCP, who is part of the government, is in the fray against the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance.
On the other hand, Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena (UBT) has not only got the support of Sharad Pawar's NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), his cousin Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray has also joined them in this election. Raj Thackeray had contested elections against him in 2017.
While the inclination of Marathi people of Mumbai has increased towards Uddhav-Raj due to the coming together of Thackeray brothers, and due to opposition to BJP, the Muslim voters of Mumbai are also openly supporting him, at the same time, due to the same reasons, the pro-Marathi voters of BJP and Shiv Sena (Shinde) as well as the non-Marathi speaking voters are inclined towards the BJP-led alliance.
Especially Hindi speaking, Gujarati speaking and South Indian voters are preferring to stay with BJP because of Raj Thackeray's bitter statements. Amidst the fight between these two alliances, the situation of Congress, which is playing alone this time, has become like a sandwich.
1700 candidates from all parties are in the fray for 227 municipal corporations of BMC. Of these, there are 822 male and 878 female candidates. In 2017, there was a total of 55 percent voting. This time the State Election Commission has tried many new methods to increase the voting percentage.
Booths have also been made in multi-storey buildings. A total of 1,03,44,315 voters of Mumbai will vote on January 15. The election results of a total of 29 municipal corporations including Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Nashik will come on January 16.
Reason for delaying elections by four years
The main reason for not holding elections for four years in the Municipal Corporation with a budget of more than Rs 70,000 crore has been the legal dispute regarding OBC reservation. The Supreme Court had directed that reservation can be given only on the basis of data collected through triple test. Due to this the election process remained pending for so many years.
Apart from this, the previous Mahavikas Aghadi government had increased the number of wards from 227 to 236. After Shinde government came to power in 2022, the new government tabled this decision. Due to this also the matter remained entangled first in the High Court and then in the Supreme Court.
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