BMC polls may be held as early as second week of January

The elections to district councils and panchayat samitis are expected to be scheduled in the last week of January

Mumbai: As most of the 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra are on track with election preparations, including drafting a list of duplicate entries in the electoral rolls, the polls are expected to be held in mid-January, according to officials aware of the developments. Meanwhile, the elections to district councils and panchayat samitis are expected to be scheduled in the last week of January.

Thane, India - December -02, 2025: KulgaonÐBadlapur Municipal Council (nager Parishad)General Election 2025: In Badlapur, Thane district, voting for the KulgaonÐBadlapur Municipal Council (nager Parishad) has begun on Tuesday Voters searching name in Voter list at the polling stations at badalapur East ,in Thane ,in Mumbai, India, on, Tuesday, December -02, 2025. ( Praful Gangurde / HT Photo) (Praful Gangurde)

The State Election Commission (SEC) held a review meeting with all municipal commissioners on Thursday to take stock of the poll preparations. A second review is scheduled for Monday, after which the SEC is expected to announce the civic poll dates.

While most of the municipal corporations have stated that they are on schedule to finish identifying and flagging duplicate voters before the SEC’s December 10 deadline for publishing the final rolls, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has asked for a couple of more days, officials said.

This is because the BMC needs some more time to verify whether namesakes in the electoral rolls are duplicate entries, according to a civic official. The voter list provided to the municipal corporations by the SEC does not contain photographs, in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling, thereby making verification difficult in the case of namesakes. There have been cases where voters with identical names were flagged as duplicate entries, the official said.

“The BMC has developed its own mechanism to identify photo-similar entries in the electoral rolls provided by SEC. The identification of the repeated voters and finalisation of the voters list is expected to be completed in a week. The flagging of repeated voters to ensure they vote only at one booth will go on for a couple of more weeks even after the elections are announced,” the official added. The BMC is also taking undertakings from voters whose names appear more than once in the list to ensure they vote from only one booth.

According to rough estimates, there are over 2 million potential repetitive entries in the electoral rolls across the 29 municipal corporations, out of which 1.1 million are from Mumbai.

However, SEC officials still expect the municipal corporation elections to be held in mid-January. “The elections are expected to be announced after December 15 and may be held between January 15 and 18. We have directed the corporations to keep the anomalies in the electoral rolls to a minimal level to avoid any uproar among voters and allegations by the opposition,” said an official familiar with the developments.

Apart from identifying duplicate entries, all other preparatory work, including the formation of wards and the allocation of electronic voting machines, has been completed in most of the civic bodies. “During the next review meeting on Monday, the final call on the conduct of the polls will be taken,” the official said.

After the Supreme Court last week gave the green light for the long-delayed elections to go ahead, including seats where the reservation cap of 50% has been exceeded, the SEC decided to hold the municipal corporation elections in the second phase, instead of the third phase as planned earlier. Since the apex court has not allowed the polls for the district councils and panchayat samitis exceeding 50% quota cap to go ahead, these elections are expected to be pushed to the third phase.

Polling for 222 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats was held in the first phase on December 2. The entire electoral process for all local bodies in Maharashtra has to be completed by January 31, 2026.