Campaign ends for ten municipal corporations in Maharashtra

Mumbai, Jan 30 (UNI) Campaign for all the ten Municipal Corporations Elections in Maharashtra, to be held on February one, ended today.

The corporations going to polls are -- Mumbai, Thane, Nasik Ulhasnagar, Nagpur, Akola, Amravati, Solapur, Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

The elections are significant as this will project the mood of the urban voters of the state.

According to official sources, the ten corporations have 1162 wards and total 9246 candidates are in the fray.

In all, there are 1,57,90,182 voters for these municipal corporations. There will be 13,616 polling stations, the sources said adding that 19,580 electronic voting machines will be kept ready for the elections.

As many as 1599 polling stations have been termed as 'sensitive' in the state.

Among all the ten corporations, Mumbai Municipal corporation is getting the maximum attention for being the financial capital of the country. The city's annual budget stands at Rs 12,000 crore.

There are 227 wards in the city for which 2,376 candidates are in the fray. There will be 6,951 polling stations out of which 343 have been tagged sensitive. The total number of voters are 83,88,460.

While, Shiv Sena and BJP have an alliance for all the ten municipal corporations, Congress and NCP could also work out the same arrangement for any of the corporations barring Akola.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi addressed a public meeting here on December 23 but the party leaders said it not an election meeting. Later, campaign for the party was taken up by Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress committee president Prabha Rau and Gurudas Kamat.

Sharad Pawar addressed public meetings as part of his campaigning for the NCP. He even participated in road shows despite health problems. The NCP chief was assisted by Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel, Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil, state NCP chief Arun Gujarathi and others.

Shiv Sena-BJP alliance mainly banked on the two public meetings addressed by Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray in Mumbai and Thane.

Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, Manohar Joshi, Diwakar Raote also participated in the campaign for the alliance.

Besides a galaxy of leaders including Venkaiah Naidu, film star- turned politicians Hema Malini, Dara Singh and Shatrughna Sinha, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi also shared the dais with Shiv Sena Chief to address a public meeting here.

Out of ten municipal corporations, Pune, Nagpur, Amravati and Solapur are being currently ruled by the Congress while Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is controlling Mumbai, Thane, Nasik and Akola. The NCP is ruling Pimpri Chinchwad and Ulhas Nagar.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, a breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena, led by Raj Thackeray, the estranged nephew of Mr Bal Thackeray contesting most of the seats in Mumbai, Thane and Nasik.

UNI