Independents, women galore for M'rashtra municipal polls

Nine hundred and thirty candidates out of whom 645 are women, are putting their “voter–wooing” skills to test in the elections to the 122–member Nashik Municipal Corporation while the slugfest for the Nagpur Municipal Corporation will see 1340 aspirants battling it out.

These details for the two municipal corporations, which are scheduled to go to the polls on February 16, were revealed by the state election committee on Saturday. Nashik is seeing more independent and women candidates than ever before. Local political observers added interestingly in this election is that the long-time ally Shiv Sena and BJP are also going to contest independently. In 2007, the two parties fought together and managed to garner power by roping in support from independents and local outfits.

This time, the tension between the two allies which had been simmering for a while came to fore during the seat-sharing talks. In 2007, of the 108 seats they contested, SS managed to win 26 from the 62 seats they contested while BJP gleaned 14 out of the 26 they fought. While BJP is going alone into the fray, Sena leadership, as if they had a premonition, had last year forged a pre–poll alliance with Republican Party of India (Athavale faction.)

In the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, the total withdrawal of nominations, till Saturday evening was 733 and the total nominations received for 145 seats were 2093.