Thursday 18 / April / 2024
Mumbai: All eyes will be on the outcome of the fiercely-fought Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections as counting for polls to 10 municipal corporations and 25 zilla parishads across Maharashtra begins on Thursday morning.
Counting of votes will begin at 10am, an election official said here on Wednesday. About 56 per cent voters had on Tuesday exercised franchise across 10 municipal corporations in the west central state of Maharashtra, including for the all-important Mumbai civic body BMC which recorded a 55 per cent turn-out.
Bharatiya Janata Party and its bickering ally in the state government Shiv Sena, who could not form an alliance for the civic poll in the megapolis or elsewhere this time, fought keenly, lashing out freely at each other during the bitter campaign.
The turn-out for 11 zilla parishads and 118 panchayat samiti polls on Tuesday was 69 per cent. The stakes are high for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, who led their respective parties from the front and were involved in a no-holds-barred campaign, relegating the Opposition Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party and other players like the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen to the background.
Apart from Mumbai, the municipal corporations which went to the polls were Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, Pune, Pimpri- Chinchwad, Solapur, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur. In Mumbai, there were 2,275 candidates and 9.2 million voters. The first phase of 15 zilla parishads and 165 panchayat samitis polling was held on February 16 where 69 per cent voters exercised their franchise.
