Overview
- Polling for Maharashtra’s civic bodies runs 7:30 am to 5:30 pm on January 15 with counting on January 16, and the state has declared a public holiday within municipal limits to facilitate voting.
- The BMC fight pits the BJP–Shinde Sena Mahayuti against a reunited Uddhav Thackeray–led Sena (UBT) with the MNS, as Congress contests separately with the VBA; in Mumbai the BJP is contesting 137 seats, Shinde Sena 90, Sena (UBT) 163, Congress 143, NCP 94, MNS 52 and VBA 46.
- Scale and logistics include 227 wards, 10,231 polling booths and extensive SVEEP outreach such as poster drives at CSMT and BMC HQ, digital roll verification, AHAR dining discounts for voters and postal ballots exercised by 11,627 election-duty staff.
- Administrative measures include show-cause enforcement and police action notices for 4,521 absentee election-duty staff from January 12, alongside a planned deployment of more than 25,000 security personnel in Mumbai on polling and counting days.
- Pre-poll legal moves saw the Shinde faction petition the Bombay High Court to annul UBT leader Kishori Pednekar’s nomination, with the court deferring a hearing until after the polls, as reports note Mahayuti candidates have already won 68 civic seats unopposed and alliance leaders forecast control of the BMC.