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By:

Abhijit Mulye

21 August 2024 at 11:29:11 am

Tension within Mahayuti in MBMC

Mumbai: As the final date for filing nominations is advancing, the tension within Mahayuti has started mounting. While the tension remained confined only to BJP in corporations like Nashik and Solapur, in the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) neighbouring Mumbai, the BJP’s tough stand has upset minister Pratap Sarnaik who has given an ultimatum of 24 hours to the BJP, to forge an alliance in the city. Owing to the paucity of time the final alignments are being made in all the...

Tension within Mahayuti in MBMC

Mumbai: As the final date for filing nominations is advancing, the tension within Mahayuti has started mounting. While the tension remained confined only to BJP in corporations like Nashik and Solapur, in the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) neighbouring Mumbai, the BJP’s tough stand has upset minister Pratap Sarnaik who has given an ultimatum of 24 hours to the BJP, to forge an alliance in the city. Owing to the paucity of time the final alignments are being made in all the Municipal Corporations across the state. Series are meetings - with party workers and prospective candidates; with prospective allies; with prospective defectors from opposition parties - are being conducted by almost all the leaders of all the political parties. These meetings are likely to continue throughout the Sunday night and even Monday so that the party candidates will be able to file nominations on Tuesday. On the background, the grand picture about alliances is likely to be clear on Monday. However, the as the deadline is approaching, the tension within the alliance parties too is seen rising everywhere. In MBMC it crossed the threshold and made the minister Pratap Sarnaik call a press conference and issue a public ultimatum to it stronger ally. Stronger Party The BJP has been stronger than the Shiv Sena in MBMC. Moreover the recent incoming from all parties, including Shiv Sena, has made the BJP stronger in the city. On the contrary, the Shiv Sena is weaker even though it inducted some on the disgruntled BJP workers in the city. Owing to this ‘Big Brother’ image in the city the BJP had put forth several conditions before even beginning seat sharing talks with the Shiv Sena. Some of the conditions laid down for alliance indicated at the real reasons of tensions between the two parties. One such was about ‘Shivar Garden’ a public facility developed by the corporation. While it has been handed over to a Shiv Sena worker close to minister Pratap Sarnaik, the BJP laid a condition that it should be returned to the Corporation. Another condition was more peculiar. It said all the party workers inducted from the BJP should be sent back. Sarnaik today made it clear that while issues related to Shivar Garden can be resolved and decision regarding newly inducted workers too can be made on party level, it would warrent beginning of formal seat sharing talks. “Without talks being held how can any conditions be accepted,” Sarnaik asked adding that Shiv Sena will be free to take its own decision if the decision is not made within next 24 hours. Past Equation The BJP held 61 seats of the total 95 in MBMC while the Shiv Sena held only 22. Sarnaik compared that to the equation in Thane, where the Shiv Sena holds 82 seats and the BJP has 24, and raised question whether the BJP really wants to forge an alliance in MBMC. He also suggested that the alliance in MBMC will reflect the alliance in Thane. However, BJP MLA Narendra Mehta, who is in charge of seat sharing talks for the MBMC, tried to brush off the suggestion stating that the Shiv Sena too has thrived on the basis of the alliance in the city. This kind of tough bargain is expected to go on till tomorrow but the real picture regarding alliance will be clear only in the new year after the last day for withdrawing the nominations. Congress, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi seal alliance Mumbai:  The Congress and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), led by B.R. Ambedkar's grandson, Prakash Ambedkar, announced an alliance for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections on Sunday, with the VBA set to contest 62 of the 227 seats. Congress will contest more than 150 seats, while some seats will be allocated to the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha and RPI (Gavai), sources said. The tie-up decision was announced by Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal and VBA state vice-president Dhairyavardhan Pundkar. Sapkal said that decisions on alliances for the remaining 28 municipal corporations in the state would be taken at the local level, and both parties had authorised their local leaderships to take appropriate calls. He said the Congress-VBA tie-up was a "natural alliance" based on shared ideology rather than mere electoral arithmetic. "This is not a game of numbers, but a coming together of ideas. Both parties believe in the Constitution and in building India envisioned by it, based on equality, fraternity, and social justice," he said. Recalling that the two parties had earlier come together during the 1998 and 1999 elections, Sapkal said that after a gap of 25 years, a new chapter had begun. "It took time for the process, but from today, a new phase in state politics has started," he added. VBA leader Pundkar said the alliance had been formed to stop "the divisive politics of the BJP. He said Sapkal had taken the initiative for the alliance and maintained a positive approach from the beginning. "In the Mumbai civic elections, the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi will contest 62 seats," he reiterated. VBA state vice-president and chief spokesperson Siddharth Mokale said seat-sharing talks in alliances were never fully satisfactory but required consensus from both sides. Elections to 29 municipal corporations are scheduled for January 15, 2026. The formal schedule of ZP polls is awaited. Notably, the Congress had announced to contest the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections solo. In the 2017 BMC elections, the Congress won only 31 seats, far behind the then undivided Shiv Sena and the BJP. Verification shows 16,574 as repeat voters Thane:  The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) has completed a comprehensive verification exercise to identify and scrutinise potential repeat voters in the January 15 civic polls, officials said on Sunday. In a release, the TMC said 83,645 voters flagged as potential repeat voters were examined in detail during the verification of the electoral rolls. "The scrutiny revealed that the names and photographs of 67,071 voters did not match, confirming they were not repeat voters. In view of the verification findings, the star mark appearing against the names of 67,071 voters will be removed," the release quoted Deputy Commissioner (Elections) Umesh Birari as saying. This would ensure these voters can exercise their franchise without any inconvenience or restriction on polling day, he added. "The verification process confirmed 16,574 voters as genuine repeat voters, as their names and photographs were found to be identical in the electoral rolls. The star mark against the names of such voters will be retained. Their names will be clearly stamped as 'repeat voter' in the voter list," Birari informed. Such voters would be allowed to vote only after submitting a written undertaking in the prescribed format at the polling station, declaring that they are voting at the same location and only once, he said. "Special attention will be paid to these voters to prevent any possibility of double voting. Polling officials will closely monitor the process. The verification drive was undertaken to uphold transparency in the electoral process, prevent double or bogus voting, and safeguard the rights of genuine voters," the release said. An accurate and error-free voter list is essential for a healthy democracy, it asserted. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Unanimity has been reached on 207 seats in the BMC, of which the BJP will contest 128 and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena 79. Talks are underway on the remaining 20 seats. Decisions on these seats will be taken after considering the candidates in the fray.” Ameet Satam President, Mumbai BJP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “How long will you deceive the people with emotional politics? Put up banners about the promised dams for Thane’s water security or the transportation issues that have plagued the city for 20 years. Thane is asking: what does this ‘Namo’ politics give them when basic infrastructure is in chaos?” Avinash Jadhav, Leader, MNS

Administrative Sabotage

West Bengal’s voter-roll clean-up has exposed a government that treats electoral integrity not as a civic duty but as a political inconvenience.

West Bengal
West Bengal

A democracy’s health can often be measured not by how loudly its leaders invoke the ballot, but by how scrupulously they guard the machinery behind it. In West Bengal, that machinery is now grinding audibly. The Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has become a stress test of the Mamata Banerjee government’s commitment to clean elections. The results so far are damning.


Consider the numbers. Of the 4,600 micro-observers appointed by the ECI to supervise hearings on claims and objections, 778 failed to even attend a mandatory training session in Kolkata on December 24. These were not party cadres or political appointees, but Group A and Group B central government employees, drawn deliberately from outside the state’s political ecosystem, though posted within it, to act as neutral sentinels. Their collective absence was so brazen that the Commission was forced to issue show-cause notices, threatening disciplinary action and even suspension. For an exercise as procedurally modest as voter verification, such defiance is extraordinary. However, this seems to be familiar in Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal.


The hearings will determine the fate of some 32 lakh ‘unmapped’ voters, citizens whose names, or whose parents’ names, did not appear in the 2002 SIR list as well as thousands more flagged for logical inconsistencies. The process is pure housekeeping.


Discrepancies in spelling, age or parentage are expected to be resolved while voters who miss a hearing are to get another chance. All documents are uploaded digitally. If anything, the process bends over backwards to err on the side of inclusion.


Yet it is precisely this insistence on procedure that seems to have unsettled the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government. From the outset, the party has alleged that micro-observers were being ‘imported’ from other states, a claim swiftly rebutted by the Chief Electoral Officer.


More telling is the quiet resistance on the ground. Micro-observers are meant to sit at 11 tables in each of the state’s 294 Assembly constituencies, alongside Booth Level Officers, supervisors and Electoral Registration Officers, examining enumeration forms and correcting errors. Their unexplained absence threatens to slow or derail the process.


The exclusion of Booth Level Agents (BLAs) - party representatives - from the hearings has further sharpened the confrontation. The ECI insists this is to “avoid unnecessary chaos” and ensure transparency, since all documents are uploaded and nothing can be hidden. That logic is sound. BLAs, unlike BLOs, are partisan actors who were already involved in collecting documents. But for the ruling TMC, accustomed to embedding itself at every stage of the electoral pipeline, even a modest reduction in visibility can feel like disenfranchisement.


Mamata Banerjee has long styled herself as a ‘defender’ of democracy against an ‘overbearing’ Centre. The reality offers a sobering contrast. West Bengal’s recent electoral history, from the uncontested panchayat polls of 2018 to post-poll violence in 2021, has left scars that no amount of populist flourish can disguise. The SIR exercise was an opportunity to restore some confidence: to show that the state would cooperate fully with an independent constitutional authority, even when it was inconvenient. Instead, it has chosen obstruction.

 

The same government that rails against alleged voter suppression elsewhere now appears uncomfortable with the idea of voters being properly mapped, verified and documented at home. The same party that claims to speak for the marginalised balks at a process designed to ensure that genuine electors are accurately recorded. Transparency, it seems, is welcome only when it is ornamental. When a state government allows or encourages a culture in which officials feel emboldened to skip training, ignore orders and test the Commission’s patience, it sends a corrosive message about the nature of democracy in West Bengal.


Banerjee and her government are being asked to tidy its rolls. Instead, they are untidying their reputation by such unseemly defiance.

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