Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and 28 other municipal corporations will be held on January 15, the State Election Commission announced on Friday, with counting scheduled for January 16.
The announcement comes amid a growing political row in Mumbai over alleged “vote chori” (vote theft), with opposition parties claiming electoral rolls have been inflated with fictitious and duplicate voters ahead of the crucial civic polls.
The BMC has begun a clean-up of the voters’ list, even as the Shiv Sena (UBT) has launched a parallel, ground-level verification drive across all 227 civic wards.
Sena (UBT) leaders claim their workers have identified thousands of bogus and duplicate entries, arguing that such anomalies could significantly influence the outcome of the elections, which will decide the political and fiscal control of the country’s financial capital.
The party says many long-time residents, particularly Marathi voters, were wrongly marked as “duplicate”, potentially jeopardising their right to vote.
The civic polls are seen as high-stakes, especially for the Sena (UBT), as it will be the first BMC election after the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena and a direct contest with the Eknath Shinde-led faction, which is part of the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra.
