Mumbai to seal its political fate today

Mumbai - The city will go to civic polls on Tuesday after experiencing the hectic and bitter electioneering from last few days. The electorates will seal the fate of 2275 candidates fighting from different political parties and independently in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Meanwhile, the State Election Commission and the BMC administration have geared up to hold free and fair elections in the city.

There are 227 wards in the city and as many as 7304 polling centres have been created at 1582 places across the city. The total strength of employees on election duty is 42,794 to be supervised by 23 officers. Each of these 23 officers has the responsibility of 8 to 13 wards with them. The BMC has claimed to have distributed the voting chits to electorates.

There are 17 highly sensitive and 688 sensitive election centres in the city. The police are keeping a strict watch on these centres and required force has been made available to the city police to do the same. A web cast camera will be used outside highly sensitive polling booths, informed additional municipal commissioner Sanjay Deshmukh.

For the first time, all the information such as assets, criminal record, etc., about the contestants will be displayed on the banners which will be posted outside the polling booths.

As the campaigning has ended on Sunday and voting is scheduled on Tuesday, the leaders of political parties are meeting the activists in those areas where they fear getting a less number of votes than their rivals. The confidential and private meetings between them and voters, where a deal is fixed by paying money for the votes, are called ‘chuha meetings’. Though the number of such chuha meetings is reported less due to limited availability of cash other promises are being made to get votes.

Shiv Sena has topped the list of fielding the highest number of candidates (227) in the BMC elections followed by Congress (221), BJP (211), MNS (201), NCP (171), BSP (109), Samajwadi Party (76), MIM (56), other recognized parties (251), and independents (717).