Mumbai: As the polls for the country's richest civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), are set to take place next month, more than one crore voters are eligible to cast their votes and decide who will run the civic body for the next five years. The elections for 227 seats of BMC will be held on January 15, while the counting of votes will be held on January 16. The last polls for the 227 seats were held in February 2017.
Historically dominated by the undivided Shiv Sena, past polls show Sena’s stronghold despite the BJP’s sharp rise in 2017. With Sena split and new alliances in place, the upcoming election is expected to be highly competitive and unpredictable.
Voter Strength Across Mumbai
According to the final electoral rolls published on the BMC’s official portal, the total number of registered voters stands at 1,03,44,315 across all wards. Of these, 55,16,707 are male voters, 48,26,509 are female voters, while 1,077 voters are listed under the ‘other’ category.
Rise In Number Of Voters Since 2017
The voter in the city has increased since 2017, as per the civic body's data, there were 91,80,497 voters, of which 50,30,363 were males, 41,49,753 were females, and 381 were categorised as 'other' voters.
Wards With Highest and Lowest Voter Counts
Polling ward 164, under the ‘L’ ward, has the highest number of voters at 62,945. Close behind is polling ward 66 in the ‘K-West’ ward, with 61,799 voters.
Speaking of the wards with the lowest number of voters, polling ward 142 in the 'M-East' ward has the lowest number of voters at 31,575, followed by polling ward 1 in 'R-North' ward with 31,916 voters.
In the voters list under the ‘other’ category, polling ward 34 in the ‘P-North’ ward has the highest number at 281, followed by polling ward 124 in the ‘N’ ward with 111 voters under the 'other' category.
Over 10,000 polling stations in Mumbai
During the press briefing on December 15, the Maharashtra SEC commissioner Dinesh Waghmare said that Mumbai city alone has around 10,111 polling booths.
11 lakh Duplicate Voters in Mumbai
The commissioner also revealed that nearly 11 lakh duplicate entries were detected in Mumbai’s electoral rolls during a verification exercise. The Commissioner also added that BMC has developed a dedicated software system to identify and eliminate duplicate voter records.
BMC Polls After 9 Years
In Mumbai, the civic polls are happening almost after nine years, as the last elections had taken place in 2017. The five-year term of the BMC corporators ended on March 7, 2022. As a result, the BMC has been functioning under an administrator-appointed structure rather than through elected corporators.
