The 50 per cent reservation for women candidates in civic bodies in the state resulted in many heavyweight corporators in Mumbai losing their ward constituencies under women reservation when the lottery was carried out on Wednesday. Leaders of most political parties within the BMC will not be able to contest from their current serving constituencies since the number of seats reserved for women has jumped from 76 of 227 in the 2007 polls to 114 in the upcoming BMC elections in 2012. Amongst the prominent senior leaders and corporators who will have to contest from nearby constituencies include BJP group leader Ashish Shelar,NCP group leader Niyaz Vanu,Congress group leader Rajhans Singh,senior Congress corporator Sameer Desai,Shiv Sena leader Sunil Prabhu,Sena corporator and BEST chairman Sunil Shinde,BJP senior corporators Manoj Kotak and improvements committee chairman Bhalchandra Shirshat,Sena strongman Prabhakar Shinde,among others. Most corporators are of the opinion that in this scenario,forming alliances will get more difficult for all parties and the number of rebellions from dissatisfied candidates is set to rise. At present,of 227 wards,61 are reserved under the OBC category of which 31 are reserved for women while 30 are open. In the general category,76 are reserved for women,while 77 have been kept under the completely open category without any reservations. Five for Scheduled Caste open,six for Scheduled Caste women and one each for open and general under the two seats reserved for scheduled tribes. Since a majority of seats that have been reserved under women and OBC quota were under the general open quota last year,many well-established corporators,prominent orators in the general body meetings,committee meetings etc saw their constituencies going either under open women or OBC women reservations. BJP leader Ashish Shelar faced a setback as his ward no 93 in Khar west has been reserved for women under the open category along with ward no 94. He is most likely to contest against Congress heavyweight Asif Zakaria from ward 96 who is likely to contest from 95 since 96 has bee reserved for women from open category. Adolf DSouza,the countrys first citizens consensus candidate,who was elected from ward no 63 in Juhu,will also have to change wards since it has been reserved for OBC open category. Congress corporator Sameer Desai said since his ward 49 has been reserved for women under the OBC quota,given candidature he will contest from ward 50 which falls under the open general category. Alliance formations are set to get difficult for all parties because of these reservations. The chances of rebellions will also rise, he said. There are fair chances of having more women than men in the BMC next year because in the current set up,there are 102 completely open non-reserved wards of which 10 women have been elected. Some of these include political heavyweights such as Shubha Raul,Subhada Gudekar,Shailaja Girkar,Shubhangi Shirke.
