- Mumbai will elect a new mayor on February 11 with nominations starting February 6
- Nominations for the mayoral post can be filed from February 6 onwards
- February 11 is the final day for withdrawal and the election date
Mumbai will elect a new mayor on February 11, with the nomination process set to begin on February 6. Nominations for the mayoral post can be filed from February 6. February 11 will be both the final day for withdrawal of nominations and the day the election is conducted.
The timeline has sharpened political activity within parties, particularly the BJP, which leads the ruling alliance in India's largest civic body.
This year's mayor will be a woman from the general category, a decision arrived at through a lottery conducted by the state government. The outcome has triggered both heavy lobbying within the ruling party and sharp criticism from the Opposition, which has alleged that the process was designed to suit those in power.
Within the BJP, the mayoral contest has exposed fault lines between different factions, with leaders privately describing it as a tussle between "old party hands" and "outsiders" who joined the party from other aliances.
Several women councillors are vying for the post, and senior leaders say lobbying has intensified over the past few days. Aspirants and their supporters have been seeking appointments with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who is seen as having the final say in the party's choice.
Three names dominate discussions within the BJP: Harshita Narvekar, Ritu Tawde and Sheetal Gambhir. A faction of the Mumbai BJP is firmly backing Ritu Tawde, while Assembly Speaker Rahul Narvekar is said to be exerting considerable influence to push the candidature of his sister-in-law, Harshita Narvekar.
At the same time, another section within the party has raised objections, arguing that Narvekar, Tawde and Gambhir are not "original" BJP members, having joined from other parties. These leaders insist that the mayor's post should go to a woman who has spent years working within the BJP organisation in Mumbai.
The political churn follows the announcement that Mumbai's next mayor will be a woman from the general category. The decision was taken through a draw of lots conducted by the State Urban Development Department, which is headed by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.
The lottery system determines the category for which a mayor's post is reserved - general, women, Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) or Other Backward Classes (OBC). Once the category is declared, eligible councillors can file nominations.
An official said the draw was conducted for Mumbai and 28 other civic bodies in Maharashtra where elections were held on January 15.
The outcome of the draw proved to be a setback for the Shiv Sena (UBT), which had hoped that the mayor's post in Mumbai would be reserved for a Scheduled Tribe woman. Both eligible women councillors in the ST category belong to the party led by former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray.
Following the civic election results last week, Thackeray had publicly expressed hope that "if God is willing", Mumbai would get a mayor from his party. Those hopes were dashed once the draw placed the post in the general category.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) had calculated that an ST reservation would have given it a rare opening to reclaim the top civic post, which it held continuously for 25 years from 1997, when the party was still undivided.
