Except few sporadic incidents, campaigning remained peacefully

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

Two petrol bombs were found in vehicles of Congress candidate Aslam Sheikh in Malwani, which were defused later whereas one independent candidate 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 electoral of the city 23,81,354 comprise 13,45,635 male and 10,35,715 female voters. In the western suburbs, the number of voters are 36,27,052 that include 19,89,661 male and 16,37,361 famale, while in the eastern suburbs, total voters are 23,80,050 which comprise of 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 out of them 341 booths in 25 wards were declared hyper sensitive and sensitive by the electoral officials.

Over 42,000 officials have been deployed for smooth conduct of the elections.

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

UNI