BMC Elections Scheduled for Jan 15: A High-Stakes Battle for Mumbai's Financial Capital

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Mumbai, India - In a significant development, the State Election Commission of Maharashtra has announced that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, along with polls for 28 other municipal corporations, will take place on January 15. The counting of votes will begin on January 16. A total of 2,869 seats are up for grabs in these municipal corporations, with 3.48 crore eligible voters set to exercise their franchise. The prominent civic bodies going to polls include Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. The BMC elections are being viewed as a high-stakes contest, particularly for the Shiv Sena (UBT), as it will be the first BMC election since the party's split in 2022. The Sena (UBT) has accused the ruling BJP-led alliance of inflating the voters' list with fictitious and duplicate entries, a charge that the opposition parties have also leveled. To address these concerns, the BMC has initiated a clean-up of the voters' list, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) has launched a parallel verification drive across all 227 civic wards. The party claims to have identified thousands of bogus and duplicate entries, which could significantly impact the outcome of the elections. The civic polls are crucial for the Sena (UBT) as they will decide the party's political and fiscal control over the country's financial capital. The party's leaders argue that many long-time residents, particularly Marathi voters, were wrongly marked as 'duplicate', potentially jeopardising their right to vote. The announcement comes amid a growing controversy over alleged 'vote chori' (vote theft) in Mumbai, with opposition parties accusing the ruling alliance of manipulating the electoral rolls to influence the outcome of the elections.