BMC polls: Mumbai records 7.12% voter turnout at 9:30 am; countdown begins Friday 10 a.m.

Voting has ended in Mumbai and 28 other municipalities in Maharashtra, marking the end of the day’s polling.

A voter turnout of 52.94 per cent was recorded in the Mumbai civic polls, down from 55.53 per cent in the 2017 polls, officials said on Friday. According to data released by the civic body, ward number 114 in suburban Bhandup recorded the highest turnout at 64.53 per cent, while ward number 227 in south Mumbai’s Colaba area recorded the lowest turnout at 20.88 per cent.

In the 2017 elections, the polling percentage in Mumbai was 55.53%, while the average voting rate in 26 corporations – elections were held for the first time in Jalna and Ichalkaranji municipal corporations – was 56.35%.

Polling was held from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm on January 15 for the BMC and other municipal corporations in the state.

BMC voter turnout (%) over the years

1992 | ████████████████████ 49.14
1997 | ██████████████████ 44.36
2002 | ████████████████ 42.05
2007 | ███████████████████ 46.05
2012 | ██████████████████ 44.75
2017 | ████████████████████████ 55.28

The BMC contest is being closely watched as a high-stakes battle between the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance and the united Thackeray camp for control of the country’s richest civic body.

According to PTI, counting of votes for the BMC elections will begin at 10 am on Friday, civic commissioner Bhushan Gagrani said.

“Due to the short interval between polling and counting, vote counting for all municipal constituencies will begin on Friday at 10 a.m. It may take an hour longer than usual,” Gagrani said.

Polling is underway for 2,869 seats in 893 wards of 29 municipal corporations, with around 3.48 million voters set to decide the fate of 15,931 candidates. Of these, 1,700 candidates are in the fray in Mumbai and 1,166 in Pune.

The BMC election marks the Shiv Sena’s first civic poll since its split in 2022, when Eknath Shinde parted ways with a majority of MLAs, retaining the party’s name and symbol. The Shiv Sena, an undivided party, had controlled the BMC for 25 years.

Except Mumbai, the other 28 municipal corporations have multi-member wards. The municipal elections are being held after a gap of more than six years, with the terms of these bodies having ended between 2020 and 2023. Nine of the 29 corporations are located in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), India’s most urbanized belt.

The voter turnout in the previous BMC elections stood at 49.14 percent in 1992, 44.36 percent in 1997, 42.05 percent in 2002, 46.05 percent in 2007, 44.75 percent in 2012 and 55.28 percent in 2017.

More than 25,000 police officers were deployed in Mumbai to supervise the voting and counting.