No dates for Maharashtra local body polls announced, clarifies State Election Commission

Madan was responding after a few media outlets reported that the July 5 notification mentioned September -October as the period to hold local body elections this year in Maharashtra.

He said a cut-off date was decided to use the Assembly voters’ list for all local body elections. For this, July 1, 2023, was decided as the cut-off date for the upcoming local body polls, Madan clarified. He said that the voters’ list for the Assembly election is used for local body polls and no separate lists are prepared. The Assembly voters’ list is used by dividing them into wards.

“In addition, the Supreme Court has issued status quo on all local body elections except gram panchayat polls. Therefore, the issue of announcing the election schedule does not arise,” said Madan.

He added that the cut-off date is updated from time to time to keep the voters’ list updated and it is conveyed through notification. “Similar notifications were issued in the past as well. These notifications are not election programmes. If the elections are not held in the mentioned period in the notification, a new notification is issued again to fix new cut-off date,” he added.

Local body elections in Maharashtra are now on hold for over one-and-a-half years while in case of a few other local bodies, it has been pending for almost three years now.

The issues related to reservation to OBCs as well as the confrontation between previous MVA and present Eknath Shinde – Devendra Fadnavis government over increasing the number of wards in Mumbai from 227 to 236 is being contested in the Supreme Court. Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis in the ‘Ideas Exchange’ programme of The Indian Express, last week, said that the pendency of cases in the apex court has put the elections on hold.

Politically, it was argued that the Eknath Shinde-Fadnavis government kept on postponing the elections as they were not confident of winning. After the rebel faction of NCP led by Ajit Pawar joined the government, it was said that the elections would now be held. The SEC’s notification led to confusion that the election programme has been announced.