MUMBAI: Uddhav Thackeray said that if God wishes, then the next mayor of Mumbai will be from the Shiv Sena (UBT) even though his party and its allies fall short of the 114-seat majority in the 227-member BMC.
The reason for this is the reservation lottery, if Mumbai’s Mayor gets the scheduled tribe (ST) reservations, the situation changes. The single largest BJP with 89 seats, and its ally the Shinde-led Shiv Sena with 29 seats, neither have any ST category newly elected corporators who can throw their hat for the reserved Mayor post.
On the otherhand, the Shiv Sena (UBT), with 65 seats has two corporators are from the ST category. These newly elected ST category corporators are Jitendra Walvi from BMC’s ward number 53 and Priyadarshani Thakare from ward number 121 in Mumbai.
In this scenario, Shiv Sena (UBT) could secure the Mumbai mayor post despite lacking a majority, as reservation rules mandate that ST or SC posts go to elected corporators of that category, regardless of party strength.
This “ifs and buts” scenario aligns with Uddhav Thackeray’s claim that the next Mumbai mayor could be from Shiv Sena, a view echoed by Sanjay Raut.
However, a senior government officer familiar with the reservation lottery, requesting anonymity, said the state election commission will conduct the SC, ST, OBC, OBC women, general women, and general category lottery for 29 civic bodies on January 22 at Mantralaya.
Under the reservation policy, 7% of mayoral posts go to STs, 11.5% to SCs, and 27% to OBCs, with the remaining posts reserved for women (general and OBC) and the general category. Among the 29 civic bodies, at least two mayoral posts will go to STs, three to SCs, nine to OBCs, and the rest will be distributed among women and general category representatives.
“If the recent 29 civic bodies elected representation are called as new, then the population criteria will be used while allotting the category reservations to the respective cities' mayor posts, such as if that city's pollution has more ST, then that city will get the ST as mayor and the same with the other category as well," the official said.
"But the state urban development department does not consider this election as new, and treats it as a continuous process as carry forward from the last elections, then rotations method will be used while choosing the reservation category. If last time, Mumbai had an SC mayor (Snehal Ambekar), the next turn can be ST, OBC, women OBC, women general and general as well. Therefore, a lot of technical issues in it that will be explained at the time of opening the lottery for the mayor post reservation on January 24 at Mantralaya,” he added.