The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation building in Mumbai.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Mumbai: The counting of votes polled for elections to 29 municipal corporations of Maharashtra commenced on Friday and the results are expected to alter the course of the State politics, with majority of the exit polls predicting a sweep by the BJP-led Mahayuti.
The cities that went to polls include Mumbai, the financial capital of India, where the civic body Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has a budget of Rs 70,000 crore-plus and reserves of Rs 80,000 crore-plus.
The counting commenced at 10 am.
According to officials of the State Election Commission, results from all the corporations will be declared by 4 pm.
The elections were held in all the geographical regions of Maharashtra.
As far as Konkan region is concerned, all the nine corporations in the Mumbai metropolitan region went to polls — Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Ulhasnagar, Navi Mumbai, Panvel, Mira-Bhayander and Vasai-Virar.
The Western Maharashtra cities are Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Kolhapur, Ichalkaranji and Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, while the North Maharashtra cities include Nashik, Malegaon, Ahilyanagar, Jalgaon and Dhule.
From Vidarbha, the cities that went to polls are Nagpur, Amravati, Akola and Chandrapur while the Marathwada cities are Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Nanded-Waghala, Parbhani, Jalna and Latur.
The fate of several political bigwigs would be weighed with the outcome of the results.
On Thursday, an average of around 50 to 55 per cent-plus voting was witnessed from the 29 cities.
The ‘jewel in the crown’ for these polls is Mumbai, as it is considered a bellwether, and political performance in the Maximum City often signals broader urban trends ahead of State and national polls.
Majority of the exit polls have indicated a Mahayuti win, with BJP-Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena-Ramdas Athawale-led RPI (A) combine managing to establish dominance in the BMC. The Ajit Pawar-led NCP, an ally of the BJP, has gone separately in Mumbai.
The Mahayuti is expected to get 130-150 seats.
On the other hand, the Thackeray cousins — Uddhav, who heads the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Raj, who leads the MNS, and Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) will land somewhere between 50 to 60 seats, while the Congress and its allies Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and Mahadev Jankar-led Rashtriya Samaj Paksha will get 15 to 20 seats.
The key question is will the BJP be able to pull off a "triple-engine sarkar" in India’s financial capital of Mumbai? This means, the Thackerays may lose control of the BMC after over quarter of a century.