Overview
- Polling is scheduled for January 15 from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm with counting on January 16 across 29 municipal corporations, including Mumbai.
- The state has invoked the Negotiable Instruments Act to notify a public holiday in the poll jurisdictions, while the RBI, NSE and BSE have not yet issued closure circulars for January 15.
- The BMC race spans 227 wards with about 10.344 million eligible voters and 1,700 candidates, including 879 women and 821 men, a decline in total contestants from 2017.
- Alliances are set with the BJP contesting 137 BMC seats and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena 90, as Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) teams up with Raj Thackeray’s MNS and receives support from the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP in parts.
- Preparing for the new general body, the BMC has begun Rs 1.22 crore repair and cleaning work at its headquarters to ready the mayoral and committee chambers.