The much-delayed elections for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra will finally take place on Thursday, with more than a third of the state’s electorate eligible to cast votes for 2,869 seats. The results, which will follow on Friday, will be keenly watched across the nation as they will indicate the political drift in the country’s richest state’s urban areas. However, the attempts to forge pre-poll alliances for the larger municipal corporations going to vote this week and the election of presidents to the 246 smaller municipal councils that were voted in last December have proved an old political adage: power trumps principle.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar broke ranks with the BJP-led Mahayuti to team up with his uncle Sharad Pawar’s faction of the NCP to fight for the consequential Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad corporations. Meanwhile, the Shinde Sena turned the tables on its state-level ally BJP for the Ambernath council president’s election. At first, the BJP tried to keep the Shinde Sena out by poaching all 12 Congress corporators, but the latter wrested control by getting four NCP corporators to cross over. In Akot, all five corporators of the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM are supporting the BJP.
However, in an affirmation of procedural propriety amid this horse-trading, state election commissioner Dinesh Waghmare has disallowed the government from disbursing a payout of ₹3,000 under the Majhi Ladki Bahin scheme for women just before the upcoming polls.
The undoubted crown jewel in this round is Mumbai. With an annual budget of over ₹74,000 crore, the annual earnings of the country’s richest corporation is similar to that of several small states put together. The battle for Mumbai has brought together the enstranged Thackeray cousins, Uddhav and Raj, after decades. The Congress, meanwhile, is ploughing a lonely furrow. BJP leader K Annamalai’s mention of Mumbai being an ‘international city’ has only helped the Raj-Uddhav duo in stoking local Marathi pride in the city’s ‘ownership’.
These shenanigans come at a time local self-government is enfeebled in the state. Mumbai has not had an elected corporation since February 2022, while five other corporations have not had elected bodies for over five years. A commissioner running the show on extension is euphemism for state control, when these bodies are really about greater local participation in governance.