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Voting for Maharashtra local body elections is underway, with the first phase for hundreds of municipal councils and nagar panchayats beginning on Tuesday.
These multi-phase elections are being conducted under a Supreme Court directive for local body elections to be completed by January 31, 2026. Voting for 264 Municipal Councils and 42 Nagar Panchayats began on Tuesday. The vote counting will occur on Wednesday. The schedules for other major local bodies are yet to be announced, including elections for 29 Municipal Corporations (e.g., the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections are expected around mid-January), 32 Zilla Parishads and 336 Panchayat Samitis. The top court had mandated that all pending local body elections be completed by January 31, 2026, to ensure that "elected representatives, rather than bureaucrats, run grassroots democratic institutions." The primary contest in the Maharashtra local body elections is reported to be between two major alliances, the ruling Mahayuti and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). The Mahayuti (Ruling Coalition) alliance is in power at the state level, and its primary constituents are the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction), and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) (Ajit Pawar faction). The main opposition alliance (Maha Vikas Aghadi) comprises the Indian National Congress (INC), Shiv Sena (UBT) (Uddhav Thackeray faction), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) (Sharad Pawar faction, or NCP-SP) and other contesting parties. Besides the main alliances, several other national and regional parties are contesting, and some are forming local-level alliances. They are the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), led by Raj Thackeray, and Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), which is also a factor in some constituencies and has formed local alliances with MVA partners. Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) is a farm-focused organisation that has aligned with different parties in various local bodies. Various communist factions are also participating in the elections. The State Election Commission (SEC) introduced a system to mark suspected duplicate voters with "double stars" on lists, requiring strict identity checks at polling stations to address opposition concerns about bogus entries. The elections are proceeding after the Supreme Court cleared the way for 27% OBC reservations, subject to the condition that the total reservation does not exceed the 50% ceiling in any local body. The SEC launched a mobile application to provide voters with information about candidates and their submitted affidavits. (ANI)
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