The elections for the 2 seats of the Legislative Council to be filled through the Mumbai Municipal Corporation may be triangular. Congress corporator Suresh Koparkar has filed his nomination as an independent candidate at the last minute on the last day of filing nominations on Tuesday. However, his nomination has only the signatures of Congress corporators as proposers and seconders.
Will decide on 26
November 26 is the last day for withdrawal of nominations, if even after this Koparkar remains in the fray, then the path of unopposed election will be closed and voting will have to be done in BMC for 2 seats of the Legislative Council.
secret ballot will be held
It may be noted that secret ballot is to be held for the Legislative Council elections. In such a situation, if there is a triangular contest, then the chances of horse-trading of civil servants increase. BJP candidate Rajhans Singh and Shiv Sena candidate Sunil Shinde are both strong candidates. Both parties also have enough votes of corporators to win their candidates. That is why prima facie, both the candidates do not see any threat, as 77 votes are needed to win.
barricade from all sides
The barricade of corporators has begun after Koparkar filed his nomination as an independent candidate on Tuesday. Apart from 83 corporators of BJP, Rajhans Singh is engaged in garnering additional votes of corporators of other parties. At the same time, Shiv Sena is also trying to garner more votes than the strength of its corporators. In such a situation, the arithmetic of victory of Congress-backed independent candidate Suresh Koparkar can be successful only if he gets the votes of all the corporators of Congress, NCP, SP and MIM. Together, get additional votes of Shiv Sena. He also got votes of some BJP corporators and also got some second preference votes.
election schedule
Nominations from 16 to 23 November 24 Scrutiny of nomination papers Nominations till 26 November Voting on 10 December Counting of votes on 14 December
Status of votes in BMC
Party Votes Shiv Sena 99 BJP 83 Congress 30 NCP 08 SP 06 MIM 02 MNS 01