Law Notify, January 15, 2026 : Voting is taking place on Thursday for elections to 29 municipal corporations across Maharashtra, including the high-profile Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), under tight security arrangements.
The main focus is on Mumbai, where the BJP-led MahaYuti alliance is facing a tough challenge from the reunited Thackeray cousins, Uddhav and Raj, in the fight to control the country’s richest civic body.
Across the state, polling is being held for 2,869 seats in 893 wards. Around 3.48 crore voters will decide the fate of 15,931 candidates contesting these civic elections.
In the BMC alone, which has an annual budget of over Rs 74,400 crore, nearly 1,700 candidates are contesting 227 seats. These elections are being held after a delay of four years.
Counting of votes for all 29 municipal corporations will take place on January 16. The civic polls are being conducted after a long gap, as the terms of these local bodies ended between 2020 and 2023 but were delayed due to legal and administrative issues.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis led the campaign for the ruling MahaYuti alliance, which includes the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
These are the first BMC elections since the Shiv Sena split in 2022, when Eknath Shinde broke away with the support of most party MLAs. The undivided Shiv Sena had ruled the BMC continuously from 1997 to 2022.
The issue of who would become Mumbai’s mayor became a key talking point during the campaign. The BJP claimed that a Shiv Sena (UBT) victory could result in a Muslim mayor, a charge rejected by Uddhav Thackeray, whose party said Mumbai would have a Marathi mayor. Fadnavis also stated that the next mayor would be Hindu and Marathi.
In Mumbai, the BJP is contesting 137 seats, the Shiv Sena 90, and the NCP 94 seats. The Shiv Sena (UBT) has fielded 163 candidates, the MNS 52, the Congress 143, and the VBA 46 candidates. The Congress has put up 1,263 candidates across the rest of Maharashtra.
To maintain law and order during polling and counting, more than 25,000 police personnel have been deployed across Mumbai.
Ahead of the polls, Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray came together after nearly 20 years in an attempt to unite Marathi voters. Meanwhile, rival NCP factions reached local seat-sharing arrangements in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
–IANS
