Election Results: Mumbai Municipal Elections sees voter turnout of 45%; 3% up as compared to 2007

MUMBAI: Municipal Elections in Mumbai, Thane and Pune saw a low voter turnout on Thursday, while in rest of the state the turnout was moderate. Voting took place in all 10 municipal corporations without any major untoward incident. The counting of votes will begin on Friday morning and results will be out by afternoon.

Mumbai marked a turnout of 45%. A top civic official said that the voter percentage had gone up by 3% as compared to 2007. "This year, Mumbai has seen voting from nearly 43.6 lakh persons as against 38 lakh voters in the 2007 municipal elections," BMC Commissioner Subodh Kumar told reporters here.

Voting in all ten municipal corporations ended at 5.30 pm. 9,534 candidates are in the fray in these elections for 1,244 seats. The highest number was in Mumbai, where 2,232 candidates contested for 227 seats of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. According to the State Election Commission, polling in almost all cities was peaceful. Barring one or two incidents in Mumbai and Pimpari-Chinchwad corporation areas these was no violence reported anywhere.

State Election Commissioner Neela Satyanarayan said, "counting of votes will start in the morning on Friday and because of use of Electronic Voting Machines, results will be known within a few hours."

All eyes are mainly on the Mumbai Corporation results, as this is the richest local self-government body with an annual turnover of Rs 21,000 crore. Out of the 227 seats in BMC this time, Shiv Sena is contesting 135 in alliance with BJP (63 seats) and RPI (29 seats).

Congress is fighting 169 seats while its alliance partner NCP is fighting 58 seats. Raj Thackeray's MNS put up candidates in all 227 seats. In order to establish a majority in the house and control BMC, either of these alliances will have to get at least 114 seats.