BMC Elections: Voter Turnout Of 55% Highest In 25 Years
Corruption remains the key issue in Mumbai civic body elections.
The country’s richest civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, went to polls on Tuesday with over 2,200 candidates fighting it out for 227 municipal wards in the city.
According to the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC), the voter turnout was 55 percent, the highest in 25 years. Mumbai, known for its low turnout, had seen 44 percent voters cast ballot in the 2012 civic polls. In 2012, the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance had swept the elections. Shiv Sena had bagged 75 seats while BJP got 31 of the total 227 seats.
This time, the two allies in the state and the central governments are contesting the civic polls separately.
Some voters BloombergQuint spoke to claimed their names were missing names from the electoral list.
The key issues remain corruption and transparency. Other issues include pot-holed roads, traffic snarls, flooding during monsoon, filth and unhygienic conditions, voters said.
Along with Mumbai, voting took place in nine other municipal corporations in Maharashtra including Thane, Pune and Nagpur. The overall turnout for 10 state corporations was 56 percent, according to the Maharashtra SEC data.