Tuesday, Feb 21, 2017
Mumbai: Amid a low turnout in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections on Tuesday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis appealed to the people to “vote for whoever, but vote.”
By 3.30pm, the overall voting percentage was just 41.3 per cent.
Speaking whilst casting his vote in the Nagpur civic polls, Fadnavis said it was not only one’s democratic right to vote but also a “duty.”
Meanwhile, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar voted in Mumbai and said, “Rather than complaining, people must come out and vote. Whatever change that you want and feel the need to be heard, I request you to vote.”
Several Bollywood celebrities including Rekha, Shraddha Kapoor, Zoya Akhtar, Anushka Sharma and John Abraham also cast their ballots, while actor Varun Dhawan said he was disappointed since his name was not on the voters’ roll.
In fact, there were hundreds of voters whose names did not appear on the voters’ list and had to trek to different voting booths to check.
“The release of list of voters got delayed and there was also a change in polling booths. All this may have an impact on elections,” BJP’s Mumbai unit president Ashish Shelar told PTI news agency.
Mumbai has 9.18 million voters and, in general, less than 50 per cent turn up to vote in the BMC elections, which re usually not taken seriously but seen as a holiday to relax.
This despite the civic conditions — bad roads, potholes, mounting and uncollected garbage on streets, thousands of hawkers occupying the streets, water scarcity, dug up roads and a myriad other problems — being never resolved or improved.
Comprising 227 seats, the cash-rich BMC is held by an alliance of Shiv Sena (89 seats) and BJP (32 seats) while the Congress has 51. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena holds 28, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has 14 and Samajwadi Party 8.
The BJP and Sena contested separately and led a bitter campaign, hurling insults at each other at every rally.
The polls are seen as a referendum for Fadnavis whose prestige is at stake.
For Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, it is about his party’s survival and identity.
The BMC has an annual budget of a whopping Rs370 billion (Dh20 billion).
A nexus between BMC politicians, officials and contractors has led to high levels of corruption leading to deteriorating conditions in the city.
Campaigning for the BJP, Fadnavis said it would bring transparency in all dealings in the civic body.
Apart from BMC, elections to 11 zilla parishad (district council) and 118 panchayat samiti (village council) were also held across Maharashtra.
Elections for the ten municipal corporations included Mumbai, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur where 19.5 million voters were expected to cast their vote.
By Pamela Raghunath Correspondent
Gulf News 2017. All rights reserved.
