The party is deputing its top leaders for the polls across the state.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit in Maharashtra has accelerated its preparations for the municipal corporation elections in Maharashtra due in April 2022, as it has starting deputing all its top office bearers, MPs, MLAs and MLCs in their respective areas. Eight important municipal corporations in Maharashtra are going for polls, namely: Mumbai, Thane, Raigarh, Nashik, Latur, Nagpur, Pune and Solapur.
In a recent meeting held at former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’ house, party leaders discussed the strategy for the upcoming polls and how to counter the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance in the elections. The meeting was attended by Mumbai BJP president Mangal Prabhat Lodha, parliamentarians Gopal Shetty, Manoj Kotak and Girish Bapat as well as many MLAs and MLCs from these districts that included Atul Bhatkalkar, Mihir Kotecha, Yogesh Sagar among others. After the Zila Parishad polls, the saffron party considers these elections as very important as the success would give it momentum going into the Lok Sabha elections and might also help it destabilize the MVA government.
Talking to The Sunday Guardian, Ganesh Padgaonkar, a Mumbai based political analyst who had covered the BJP widely said, “the municipal elections are around the corner, roughly 18 millions voters are going to vote in these polls. The BJP had activated its units at the ward level and formed frontal organizations to reach different segments of the population.
The BJP’s strategy in the municipal polls is to highlight the corruption issues in the municipal corporations and is also trying to exploit the anti-incumbency sentiments against the Shiv Sena and Congress which are ruling many corporations. The saffron party is also going to highlight the developmental measures initiated by the BJP government for the municipal bodies between 2014-2019 when Devendra Fadnavis was the CM of the state. The BJP had always been strong in these urban centres. Shiv Sena had also a lot at stake since its strongholds are in these urban cities particularly Mumbai, Thane and Nashik.”
One senior Maharashtra BJP leader who is also the Mumbai unit Vice-President said, “Our preparation is in full swing. We will fight the polls under the name, works done by former CM Devendra Fadnavis and under the direction of the central leadership. In the state the municipal polls are very important. The only issue we need to take care of is that our MPs, MLAs and MLCs don’t lobby for their own people in the ticket distribution. They should wholeheartedly work for the candidate selected by the party. In the last BMC polls, we lost 15-20 wards because of infighting at the local level. The same happened in Pune and Nashik. These polls are also giving us a golden opportunity to unsettle the Shiv Sena which had cheated us.”
The municipal corporations in Maharashtra have high budgets and are always considered important in state politics as the BJP-Shiv Sena which were out of power in the state between 1999-2014 survived in the state because they were strong in these urban corporations. The prize catch of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the largest corporation in the country which has an annual budget of over Rs 30,000 crore is also going to polls.
The BMC is the most important election for the ruling Shiv Sena as the party has been winning the election since 1989. In the last BMC polls held in 2017, Shiv Sena and the BJP, who were alliance partners then under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), had contested against each other with Shiv Sena winning 84 seats and the BJP winning 82 seats. The Shiv Sena formed the government with the help of independents.