180 nominations for BMC elections found invalid

Mumbai, Jan 17 (UNI) About 180 nominations forms were found invalid by electoral officers after scrutiny for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections.

Official sources said 180 of the total 3,546 were rejected due to various reasons as per election norms, leaving behind 3,366 valid candidatures for the 227-member house.

Multi-cornered fights would be witnessed in the election to the corporation with an annual budget of about Rs 10,000 crore.

While the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will contest the election separately, the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP combine will again contest the BMC election jointly.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), led by Raj Thackeray, nephew of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, and some other parties, including the ruling state coalition partner RPI (Athavale) and large number of independent candidates, are also in the fray.

An electorate of 83.88 lakh, of the total population of 1.19 crore of metropolis will exercise their franchise for the election. A total of 23,81,353 electorate are from the city, 36,27,052 from Western suburbs and 23,80,050 from eastern suburbs.

The last date of withdrawal is January 19. Symbols would be allocated to the candidates on January 20 and final list of candidates and list of polling booths would be announced on January 22 for the February one polls.

For the smooth conduct of elections, six IAS officials will supervise the election process with assistance of over 40,000 employees.

UNI