With the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections scheduled to be held on January 15, political activity in Maharashtra has intensified. Soon after the announcement, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) began the first round of discussions with its alliance partners in the Mahayuti. The BJP will hold talks with its key allies Shiv Sena and Republican Party of India (RPI) led by Ramdas Athawale to discuss seat-sharing and election strategy.
According to party sources, a meeting between BJP and RPI will be held at 12 pm, followed by the first round of talks between BJP and Shiv Sena at 2 pm.
Who all will be attending the meeting?
The meetings will take place at Vasant Hall in Dadar. Senior BJP leaders attending the talks include:
- Amit Satam
- Atul Bhatkhalkar
- Pravin Darekar
- Ashish Shelar
Shiv Sena leaders to join discussions representing Shiv Sena at the meeting will be:
- Uday Samant
- Ravindra Waikar
- Prakash Surve
- Rahul Shewale
BMC election schedule
Announcing the long-awaited civic election schedule at a press conference, State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare said the nomination process will begin on December 23 and continue till December 30.
A total of 29 municipal corporations, including the BMC, will go to polls. There are 2,869 seats on offer, and around 3.48 crore voters are eligible to cast their votes across major urban centres in Maharashtra.
Civic bodies going to elections include Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
The election announcement comes amid a political controversy in Mumbai over alleged “vote chori” (vote theft). Opposition parties have claimed that electoral rolls have been inflated with fake and duplicate voters ahead of the crucial polls.
The BMC has started a clean-up of the voters’ list, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) has launched a parallel ground-level verification drive across all 227 civic wards.
This will be the first BMC election after the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena and will mark a direct contest with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, which is part of the BJP-led Mahayuti government in Maharashtra. The outcome of the elections will decide the political and financial control of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.
