By Admin 
It is said that on January 15, votes will be cast for the elections of a total of 29 Municipal Corporations of Maharashtra, but more than the elections of these 29 Municipal Corporations, there is more discussion about the elections of only one Municipal Corporation. And that is BMC i.e. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation or Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. And like every time, this time too this BMC election is in the headlines like the Lok Sabha or state assembly elections.
Be it the unification of the Thackeray brothers after almost 20 years or the first elections being held amid the changed equations in Maharashtra politics, everyone’s eyes are on it. And everyone means everyone, from the leaders sitting at the top to the workers, from the big businessmen of the country to every special and common man, because the reason is not just the election but the stake in this election, in which there is money, power and also an attempt to establish the balance of political power in Maharashtra, in which every political party of Maharashtra is playing its own stake. Every party in Maharashtra has made BMC elections a matter of concern.
To understand the importance of BMC elections, first of all you have to understand BMC itself. The people of Maharashtra must be well aware of the money spent on BMC elections and the power they get from it, but those who are not from Maharashtra will have to understand BMC.
What is the budget of BMC?
Understand this that the budget for BMC elections is more than the total annual budget of many states of the country like Mizoram, Sikkim, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. The annual budget for 2025-26 presented by BMC in February 2025 was Rs 74,427 crore. How much this money is, can be estimated from the fact that in this budget, a state like Himachal Pradesh can run its work for one and a half years, because its annual budget is only about Rs 58 thousand crores.
A state like Goa can run its expenses for two and a half years with this money, because Goa’s budget is also around Rs 28 thousand crores. That means, who wouldn’t try to get the budget of more than Rs 74 thousand crores? Rest, this is also the Municipal Corporation, which also saves about Rs 3 thousand crore to Rs 4 thousand crore every year and by saving, BMC has got a surplus of about Rs 84 thousand crore in its account. This is the reason why BMC becomes an arena for every political party of Maharashtra during elections.
Who wins BMC rules Mumbai?
Now secondly, victory in BMC does not only mean getting the power of expenditure of Rs 74 thousand crores or the surplus of Rs 84 thousand crores, but also a power with which the winner rules Mumbai. And what gives it this power is the Municipal Corporation Act 1888. This Act says that whatever work related to development will be done in the country’s financial capital Mumbai, only BMC will give permission for it.
That is, if you want to build a new building in Mumbai, get its map passed or get a street-road-drain-pavement constructed, permission will have to be taken from BMC for everything. Now since Mumbai is the most expensive sector of India in terms of real estate, then who would not want to take control of it? And whoever owns BMC will also have control over it.
BMC also a political force!
Rest, BMC also has a political strength, which cannot be ignored. BMC means Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. So this includes both Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban. If we look at the expansion of BMC from the assembly point of view, there are a total of 36 assemblies in it. If we look at it from the Lok Sabha point of view, a total of 6 Lok Sabha seats come under the purview of BMC alone. Now BJP led Mahayuti is leading in the Assembly and has 22 out of 36 seats. While Mahavikas Aghadi had got lead in the Lok Sabha, it has a total of 4 seats in the Lok Sabha.
That means BMC has money, power and political influence, so victory in BMC means achieving these three important things. Therefore, whether it is about the parties of Maharashtra like both Shiv Sena, both NCP and MNS or about the two national parties i.e. BJP and Congress, everyone wants maximum seats in BMC in any case. Now, how many seats are there in BMC, how many seats does it mean to win BMC, what post does one get after winning BMC and what has been the history of BMC till now, let us try to understand that also, from which the future of BMC can also be seen.
How many seats in BMC?
So the total seats in BMC are 227. Whichever party wins 114 seats, becomes its own mayor, who takes all the decisions. But these decisions are not made by the mayor alone. Rather, the decision is taken by the Municipal Commissioner who is an IAS rank officer. Let us understand this BMC in a little more detail.
From the point of view of administration, BMC is divided into a total of seven zones. There are three to five wards in each zone. There are total 24 wards in Mumbai. These are divided into English alphabets from A to T. Of these, F, G, H, K, M and P have two wards each. Somewhere North-South and somewhere East-West. There are three wards in R. And why there is no ward. There are civic electoral wards in every ward. In simple language you can call them something like assembly. Their total number is 227.
Just as the person who wins the Legislative Assembly is called an MLA, similarly the person who wins the Civic Electoral Wards is called a Corporator. Just as the MLAs choose one of their own as the leader of the legislative party and he becomes the Chief Minister, similarly the corporators choose one of their own as the Mayor, who is the head of the BMC and is considered the first citizen of Mumbai.
The whole fight is for BMC Mayor?
And the whole fight is about this first citizen i.e. the Mayor. Because even though Bala Saheb’s Shiv Sena came to power in Maharashtra about 29 years after its formation i.e. on 19 June 1966, Shiv Sena had captured BMC within five years of its formation. Shiv Sena leader Hemchandra Gupte was the first Shiv Sainik who became the Mayor of Mumbai in 1971. And after that, except for a few years, the mayor of Mumbai has been more or less a Shiv Sainik.
Shiv Sena’s influence in BMC can also be understood from the fact that even when there was emergency in the entire country and Indira Gandhi was the supreme power of the country, Manohar Joshi, who was a Shiv Sainik in the 1976 BMC elections, became the mayor of BMC. From 1996 to 2022, Shiv Sena has been in control of this BMC, whether it is with BJP or against BJP. But BMC belongs to Shiv Sainiks only.
What will Shiv Sena (UBT) and Shiv Sena (Shinde) do now in BMC?
But of those Shiv Sainiks who were Bala Saheb’s Shiv Sainiks. Now Bala Saheb’s Shiv Sainiks have broken into two parts. That means Shiv Sena itself has broken into two parts. Some of Bala Saheb’s Shiv Sainiks are with Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena while some Shiv Sainiks are with Bala Saheb’s son Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena. In such a situation, the whole fight is about which Shiv Sainiks will win in the elections that are going to be held. And BJP is most interested in this, which despite first being a partner in power in Maharashtra with Shiv Sena and then forming its own power, has not been able to get any mayor of its own in BMC. There was a time when it seemed that BJP would capture BMC. In 2017, there was a difference of only three seats in the victory of BJP and Shiv Sena. BJP had won 81 seats and Shiv Sena 84. The Chief Minister was also BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, so it seemed that BJP would make the mayor. But even then Shiv Sena made its mayor.
But now Shiv Sena has broken in the changed circumstances. A faction of Shiv Sena i.e. Shinde faction is with BJP. Whereas isolated Uddhav Thackeray has got the support of his brother Raj Thackeray, because both need each other. Raj Thackeray, who left Shiv Sena due to political ambitions and family turmoil and formed MNS, has yet to decide that if Shiv Sena wins in BMC, then it should not be of Shinde’s Shiv Sena but of Uddhav’s Shiv Sena, even if Raj has to make some sacrifices for it, because the issue is to save the family’s legacy. At the same time, BJP has a chance to snatch BMC from weakened Uddhav, for which it will not only try hard, but if it has to make some sacrifices, then like in 2017, it will also make sacrifices, but for Shinde… not for anyone else.
What is Raj Thackeray’s role in BMC elections?
Because at present not only Uddhav is weak but Raj Thackeray is also weak. After the breakup of Shiv Sena, two big elections came before Uddhav. Lok Sabha and Assembly. When Uddhav contested the Lok Sabha elections under the banner of Mahavikas Aghadi formed by combining Congress, Sharad Pawar’s NCP and his Shiv Sena, he contested on 21 seats, out of which he won 9 seats. There are also 6 seats whose area of expansion is the same as that of BMC. According to this, Uddhav looks strong in this BMC election, but as soon as you look at the assembly elections, Uddhav’s weakness comes to the fore.
Uddhav had also contested the assembly elections under the banner of Mahavikas Aghadi. Uddhav got 95 seats to contest in the 288-seat assembly, out of which he won only 20 seats. Of these, 10 seats are those which come under the purview of BMC. Now as far as Raj Thackeray is concerned, Raj Thackeray did not even contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections because he had to support BJP.
There are so many deceptions in the path of politics that…
But when Raj Thackeray’s account was not opened even in the Assembly, he understood that if he remained united then he would be safe, because his son Amit Thackeray, who made his electoral debut in this election, also lost the election. And not only lost, but also reached third place. Even before this, when Raj Thackeray had tried his hand in BMC after separating from Shiv Sena, he had reached 27 seats only once in 2012, whereas in the last BMC elections of 2017, he could not even cross the double digit and was reduced to 7 seats.
In such a situation, understanding the urgency of the situation, both the brothers have joined hands so that somehow after losing everything, they can at least get hold of BMC. Therefore, they are moving slowly, cautiously, but there are so many deceptions in the path of politics that it cannot be said when and where and how. Because there are other players in this game, who may or may not play to win, they will definitely play to spoil the game. Whose game will be made and whose game will be ruined will be decided on 16 January 2026. Because the results will come the next day after voting on January 15.