MUMBAI: As Maharashtra heads to the elections on Thursday for 29 municipal corporations, the spotlight is on Mumbai, where the BJP-led Mahayuti is locked in a battle with the united Thackeray front for control of the cash-rich BMC.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has predicted that MNS leader Raj Thackeray would emerge as the biggest loser in his alliance with cousin and Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray.
He also dismissed the coming together of both NCP factions in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad as merely a localised development.
Fadnavis rued that Deputy Chief Minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar broke the rule that the alliance partners will not speak against each other.
CM Fadnavis led the ruling alliance’s canvassing, traversing the state to campaign for candidates of the Mahayuti, which includes the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
NCP, the third partner in the Mahayuti, was strategically excluded to attract "non-Hindu" voters, observers said.
This will be the Shiv Sena’s first Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election since the 2022 split, when Eknath Shinde broke away with a majority of the party’s legislators, along with its name and symbol. The undivided Shiv Sena had held sway over the country’s richest civic body for 25 years.
Polling for the 2,869 seats spread across 893 wards will begin at 7.30 am and conclude at 5.30 pm on January 15. A total of 3.48 crore voters are eligible to decide the fate of 15,931 candidates, including 1,700 in Mumbai and 1,166 in Pune.
Counting of votes will take place on January 16.
More than 25,000 police personnel, including senior officers, will be deployed across Mumbai to oversee elections to the BMC and vote counting.
Except for Mumbai, the other 28 urban bodies have multi-member wards.
In a political turn ahead of the elections, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray reunited after two decades in their bid to consolidate Marathi votes, even as rival NCP factions forged a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
In this election, the Opposition Congress has asserted its presence in Mumbai by stepping out of the shadow of its Maha Vikas Aghadi allies - Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar's NCP (SP).
The Congress has joined hands with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh in the state capital, even as it contests independently in Nagpur.
Elections to 29 municipal corporations are being held after a gap of over six years, with their terms having ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine fall within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the most urbanised belt in India.
The battlegrounds include Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Mumbai, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayandar, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.
Chief Minister Fadnavis, along with his deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, campaigned extensively across Maharashtra, while cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray concentrated their efforts on Mumbai, Thane, Nashik, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, where Uddhav held a rally.
Telangana minister Mohammad Azharuddin, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi and Tamil Nadu BJP leader K Annamalai were also among the star campaigners for the polls.
Populist promises for women were the highlight of the manifestos of both the Mahayuti and the Shiv Sena (UBT)-MNS.
The Mahayuti has promised a 50 per cent concession for women in BEST bus travel, while the Thackeray cousins have assured a Rs 1,500 monthly allowance for women domestic helps and a property tax waiver on houses up to 700 sq ft.
The Congress manifesto, by contrast, prioritises combating Mumbai’s pollution, upgrading the BEST fleet, and strengthening the city’s financial health.
The race for Mumbai’s mayoral post took centre stage in the campaign, with the BJP claiming that a Sena (UBT) victory could lead to a Muslim mayor, a charge the Uddhav Thackeray-led party countered by assuring voters of a Marathi mayor.
CM Fadnavis also guaranteed that the mayor will be a "Hindu and Marathi".
In the 227-ward Mumbai, the BJP is contesting 137 seats, the Shiv Sena 90, while the NCP is fighting separately on 94 seats. The Shiv Sena (UBT) has fielded 163 candidates, the MNS 52, the Congress 143 and the VBA 46.
The Congress has fielded 1,263 candidates across the rest of the state.
After the end of the campaigning on Tuesday, Fadnavis said Raj Thackeray will be the biggest loser in the alliance with his cousin, Uddhav Thackeray.
Downplaying the coming together of the rival NCPs in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad as a "localised phenomenon", he said the BJP will react only if both factions decide to ally after the polls, which he felt was unlikely at the moment.
Fadnavis also remarked that the Thackerays lacked wholehearted commitment in their campaign and appeared "unwilling to stake their political prestige".
While asserting that the BJP remains the central force around which Maharashtra’s politics will revolve in the future, he acknowledged that electoral setbacks do not spell the end for any party or leader. Those who strive to make a comeback can still find success, he added.