Maharashtra Civic Polls 2026: 29 civic bodies have gone to polls today.
Mumbai:
The high-stakes battle for the Brihanmumbai Corporation and 28 other civic bodies in Maharashtra, pending since 2017, will be held today. The power and prestige of controlling the BMC, Asia's richest, have ensured a politically charged atmosphere.
Here are top 10 points:
- Voting began at 7:30 am for 2,869 seats spread across 893 wards in 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra. Polling is being held after a gap of several years, with the terms of most of them having ended between 2020 and 2023.
- In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India's largest and richest civic body, only one member is elected from each ward, and so each voter will have to cast only one vote.
- Due to the multi-member ward system in the 28 other civic bodies, voters will have to cast three to five votes. The wards have three to five seats.
- The BMC election is seen as a chance for the Thackeray brothers, who have reunited in its backdrop after 20 years, to reclaim their heritage as heirs of Bal Thackeray and ensure their political survival. It is also seen as an opportunity for them to claim the prestige of the undivided Shiv Sena, which had run the Mumbai civic body and, as many said, the city, for decades.
- The election is also a test for the "Marathi Manoos" -- conceptualised during the creation of Maharashtra from the erstwhile Bombay State during the Samyukta Maharashtra movement in the 1950s.
- Given shape by Bal Thackeray, the Marathi identity became a political stamp and calling card of the Thackeray brothers, especially Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray.
- For Eknath Shinde, who walked off with more than half the Sena after splitting the party in 2022, the election is another chance to salvage the ground he has lost to the BJP and prove his claim that he is the true heir to Bal Thackeray.
- It is Shinde's ally BJP, which currently has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The party, which won 82 seats in 2019, is hoping for a bigger win. It is contesting 137 of the 227 seats in the BMC. Eknath Shinde's Sena is contesting the remaining 90.
- Ajit Pawar's faction of the Nationalist Congress Party is going solo after the BJP demanded that it strip its corruption-accused leader Nawab Malik of all key responsibilities. The NCP, though, is hoping to gain, especially in Pune, where the undivided party ran the civic body for a decade from 2007 to 2017.
- The voting will conclude at 5:30 pm, and the counting of votes will begin at 10 am on January 16.
