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Mumbai, 16 January. The counting of votes in 29 municipal corporations (local bodies) of Maharashtra has reached the final stage on Friday and if we look at the results, then there is a storm between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ruling Mahayuti constituent Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena. This means that most of the municipal corporations are going to be captured by BJP+ with majority.

The biggest talking point in this election was the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which is the richest and most prestigious municipality in the country and which was dominated by the Thackeray family (Shiv Sena) for almost 28 years (since 1997). But this time the dominance of Shiv Sena (UBT) is going to be removed from BMC also and for the first time Mumbai will have a BJP mayor.

BJP+ crosses majority mark in BMC

By the time results of 211 out of 227 seats in BMC came in, BJP+ had crossed the majority mark (114) with 118 seats. Of these, BJP had won 90 seats and Shiv Sena had won 18 seats. Maha Aghadi is seen getting 77 seats, out of which Shiv Sena (UBT) has got 57, Raj Thackeray’s MNS has got nine and NCP (SP) has got one seat. Congress, which contested the elections in alliance with VBA, has won 15 seats.

Counting of votes started at 10 am on Friday. The Thackeray cousins, who came together after nearly two decades, are lagging behind the ruling coalition in Mumbai. The ‘exit poll’ (post-election survey) had predicted a massive victory for the ruling Mahayuti alliance in the elections of 29 municipal corporations held on Thursday. According to officials, 52.94 percent voting was recorded in the BMC elections, which is less than 55.53 percent voting in 2017.

BMC’s annual budget 74,400 more than crore rupees

The annual budget of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is more than Rs 74,400 crore. Elections were held here with a delay of four years. These are the first BMC elections after the split of Shiv Sena in 2022. Uddhav and Raj Thackeray came together last month in an important political development before the elections.

In the last elections, the undivided Shiv Sena and BJP alliance had won.

Current Deputy Chief Minister Shinde had separated from the party along with most of the party MLAs in 2022 and became the Chief Minister by forming an alliance with the BJP. In the 2017 elections, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 84 out of 227 seats. At that time Shiv Sena had an alliance with BJP. The alliance had crossed the majority mark, in which BJP had got 82 seats.

Whereas elections of other municipal corporations were held after a gap of several years while the tenure of most of them had ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine municipal corporations fall in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). The municipal corporations where voting took place included Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayander, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, These include Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.