Except few sporadic incidents, campaigning ended peacefully

Mumbai, Jan 30 (UNI) Barring a few incidents of intimidation, planting crude bomb in vehicle in northcentral and western suburbans wards, campaigning for the Februray one high profile multi-cornered Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) elections ended on a peaceful note at 1700 hrs today.

A crude bomb was found in a vehicle of the Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate Aslam Sheikh in Malwani which was defused later while one independent candidate has lodged a complaint of intimidation against Congress condidates with D N Nagar police.

According to electoral officers, about 3162 candidates are in the fray for 227 seats for which 83,88,455 electoral, out of the total population of 1,19,78,450, will exercise their franchise on February one.

The total electorate in the city are 23,81,354, including 10,35,715 female voters. In the western suburbs, the number of voters are 36,27,052, including 16,37,361 famale while in the eastern suburbs, total voters are 23,80,050 comprising 13,35,914 male and 10,44,136 female.

A total of 6930 polling booths have been set up across the city for the elections in total 227 wards. Among them 341 booths in 25 wards were declared hyper sensitive and sensitive by the electoral officials.

Over 42,000 people were deployed for smooth conduct for this high profile corporation elections which is having annual budget of around Rs 10,000 crore.

Major parties contesting the civic elections are- Congress (I) on all the 227 seats, NCP 212, BJP 72, Shiv Sena 155, CPI 21, CPM 12, BSP (Bahujan Samajwadi Party) 126, RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) 10, Janata Dal (22), Janata Dal (U) one, Samajwadi Party (SP) 79, MNS (Maharashtra Navnirman Sena) 221, ABS (Akhil Bharatiya Sena) 47, RPI-A (Republican Party of India-A) 84.

UNI