MUMBAI : As counting progressed, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) said the Mahayuti alliance, comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena, had crossed the halfway mark of 114 seats in the 227-member Mumbai civic body. The BJP-led alliance was also leading in major municipal corporations including Nagpur, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Sambhajinagar.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis congratulated Maharashtra BJP president Ravindra Chavan and Mumbai BJP president Ameet Satam as trends showed the party ahead in the civic polls, party sources said.
The results so far indicate a closely fought contest in Mumbai, with the reunited Thackeray cousins, Uddhav Thackeray of Shiv Sena (UBT) and Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, leading in 67 wards under their joint Marathi Manoos campaign.
Vote counting for the elections to 29 municipal corporations across Maharashtra began on Friday morning, with significant attention on Mumbai, home to India’s richest civic body. Unlike the 2017 elections, counting in Mumbai was conducted in phases rather than simultaneously across all wards, delaying the formal declaration of results.
Election officials said 2,299 personnel were deployed for the counting process, including 759 supervisors, 770 assistants and 770 Class IV employees. Results are being compiled through a fully computerised system to ensure transparency and accuracy.
In Mumbai alone, 1,700 candidates contested 227 seats in elections to form the new BMC, which oversees a massive civic budget of ₹74,400 crore for the 2025–26 financial year. The previous BMC elections were held in 2017, and the term of the elected body ended in March 2022.
In the Maharashtra civic polls, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, known as Mahayuti, has crossed the halfway mark in Mumbai's civic body, with significant leads in other major cities. The elections, marked by a phased counting process, have been closely watched, especially in Mumbai, which manages a substantial civic budget.