Mumbai, Jan 01: There is no doubt that the alliance of two brothers, Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, is set to give a tough fight to the ruling BJP and the Shinde-led Shiv Sena in the upcoming municipal elections.
Although the Congress–VBA alliance has emerged as a third front for the Mumbai civic elections, there are as many as 32 seats out of 227 in the BMC where the Congress–VBA alliance has failed to field contestants, resulting in a direct fight between the BJP–Shiv Sena (Shinde) alliance and the Shiv Sena (UBT)–MNS alliance.
VBA struggles to field candidates on allotted seats
The Prakash Ambedkar-led VBA faced difficulties in nominating candidates in 21 seats out of the 62 seats allotted to it under the seat-sharing formula with the Congress. The Congress, however, chose to contest on five out of these 21 seats, still falling short of candidates, reports say.
Congress-led third front contests 195 seats
The Congress has so far released a list of 143 candidates, the VBA 46 candidates, and six seats have been allotted to smaller parties in the third front. This takes the total number of seats contested by the Congress-led alliance to 195, leaving 32 seats without a candidate.
Direct contests likely in 32 wards
The picture will be clear on January 3, when the final list of candidates is released. However, calculations so far indicate that 32 seats will witness a direct contest between the BJP–Shinde Sena alliance and the Thackeray brothers’ alliance. While the BJP and Shinde Sena are campaigning on development and security, the Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS alliance is focusing on wooing Marathi voters.
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Over 2,500 nominations filed for BMC polls
Out of the 2,516 nominations filed for the 227 seats in the BMC, 137 were declared invalid after scrutiny on Wednesday. The list of rejected nominations is yet to be published. Friday, January 2, is the deadline for the withdrawal of candidates.
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