Mumbai, May 18 (PTI) The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced that the biennial polls to 17 legislative council seats in Maharashtra from local authorities' constituencies, including
one by-election, will be held on June 18.
According to the poll body's notification, the process will officially begin with the filing of nominations on May 25, followed by polling on June 18 and the counting of votes on June 22.
Nominations will be scrutinised on June 2, and the last date for the withdrawal of candidatures is June 4.
The 16 local authorities constituencies going to the polls include Solapur, Ahmednagar, Thane, Jalgaon, Sangli-cum-Satara, Nanded, Yavatmal, Pune, Bhandara-Gondia, Raigad-Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Nashik, Wardha-Chandrapur-Gadchiroli, Amravati, Osmanabad-Latur-Beed, Parbhani-Hingoli, and Aurangabad-Jalna.
In a separate notification, the poll body also announced a by-election for the Nagpur local authorities constituency. BJP minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule vacated the seat after his election to the state assembly in 2024.
Polls for several of these seats had been pending since the terms of their sitting members expired in 2022. The process was delayed as the civic body polls were also overdue.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission conducted a three-phase poll to local bodies in December 2025 and January 2026. The ruling Mahayuti is expected to have an edge in the council polls, as they won a majority of seats in the local bodies election.
Among members whose terms ended earlier were Prashant Paricharak (independent) from Solapur and Arunkaka Jagtap from Ahmednagar (undivided NCP), who retired as MLCs in January 2022, and Ravindra Phatak (undivided Shiv Sena) from Thane, who retired from the council in June 2022.
Several council members retired in December 2022, including Chandubhai Patel (BJP) from Jalgaon, Mohanrao Kadam (undivided NCP) from Sangli-Satara, Amarnath Rajurkar (Congress) from Nanded, Dushyant Chaturvedi (undivided Shiv Sena) from Yavatmal, Anil Bhosale (undivided NCP) from Pune, and Parinay Fuke (BJP) from Bhandara-Gondia.
Aniket Tatkare (undivided NCP) from Raigad-Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Narendra Darade (undivided Shiv Sena) from Nashik, Ramdas Ambatkar (BJP) representing Wardha-Chandrapur-Gadchiroli, Pravin Pote (BJP) from Amravati, Suresh Dhas (BJP) from Osmanabad-Latur-Beed, and Viplove Bajoria (undivided Shiv Sena) from Parbhani-Hingoli retired in June 2024, while the term of Ambadas Danve (Shiv Sena UBT) from Aurangabad-Jalna ended in August 2025.
The ECI notification stated that an election for a Local Authorities' Constituency can only be held if at least 75 per cent of the local bodies within that jurisdiction are fully functional and at least 75 per cent of the electors are in position.
The biennial elections to fill these 16 seats of the 78-member legislative council could not be conducted at the time due to non-fulfilment of the criteria, it said.
"Now, the CEO of Maharashtra has informed that these criteria have been fulfilled in respect of all the said constituencies. Therefore, the commission has decided to conduct the biennial election to the Maharashtra legislative council from the above-mentioned 16 Local Authorities' Constituencies, " the notification said. PTI PR GK ARU
