Voting for elections to 29 civic bodies, including the high-profile Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), is being held on Thursday across Maharashtra under tight security arrangements.
As the state goes to the polls, attention is centered on Mumbai, where the BJP-led MahaYuti is engaged in a closely fought contest with reunited Thackeray cousins Raj and Uddhav for control of the country’s richest civic body.
A total of 3.48 crore voters are eligible to decide the political future of 15,931 candidates contesting 2,869 seats across 893 wards. In the BMC alone, which has an annual budget exceeding Rs 74,400 crore, nearly 1,700 candidates are vying for 227 seats in polls being conducted after a four-year delay.
The civic polls are being held after a gap of more than six years, as terms of these local bodies expired between 2020 and 2023 following legal and administrative hurdles. Counting will be held on January 16.
These elections mark the first BMC polls since the Shiv Sena split in 2022. More than 25,000 police personnel have been deployed across Mumbai to ensure smooth polling.
