15 January,2026 08:07 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
File Photo
Voting began across Mumbai's 227 wards on Thursday, with the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance locked in a high-stakes battle against the reunited Thackeray cousins for control of India's largest and richest civic body.
In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which has an annual budget exceeding Rs 74,400 crore, around 1,700 candidates are contesting 227 seats. The elections are being held after a nine-year gap, following a four-year delay. More than 25,000 police personnel have been deployed across the city to ensure smooth conduct of the polls.
A total of 1,03,44,315 citizens are eligible to vote in the BMC elections. This includes 55,16,707 male voters, 48,26,509 female voters, and 1,099 voters in the âother' category.
Counting of votes will take place on January 16.
These are the first BMC elections since the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena, when Eknath Shinde, now Deputy Chief Minister, broke away with a majority of the party's MLAs and allied with the BJP to form the government.
The undivided Shiv Sena dominated the BMC for 25 years, from 1997 to 2022.
In a significant political development ahead of the polls, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray - leaders of Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), respectively - reunited last month after nearly two decades. The move is aimed at consolidating Marathi votes, even as rival factions of the NCP forged a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
The Congress, once a dominant force in Maharashtra, has sought to reassert itself in Mumbai by stepping out of the shadow of its Maha Vikas Aghadi allies - Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP). The party has joined hands with Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh in the state capital.
Elections to 29 municipal corporations across Maharashtra are being held after a gap of several years, as the terms of most civic bodies ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine corporations are located in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the country's most urbanised belt.
The undivided Shiv Sena had earlier been a dominant force in the BMC, winning 84 seats in alliance with the BJP, which secured 82 seats. However, the political landscape has shifted following the party's split in 2022. For brothers Raj and Uddhav Thackeray, the civic polls are a crucial battle to reclaim lost prestige and test whether the Thackeray surname still commands the influence it once did in Mumbai and across Maharashtra.
