Mumbai: Ahead of the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, the civic body on Tuesday drew a lottery for reservation of wards for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), and general category seats for women. In the draw, electoral seats from where some of the key corporators were elected have been reserved for women candidates. This means that the corporators will have to contest from other seats to get elected to the BMC again.
Shiv Sena leader and former standing committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav, Shiv Sena leader Amey Ghole, Congress’ Ravi Raja, Vinod Mishra and Prabhakar Shinde from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rais Shaikh from Samajwadi Party (SP) are among corporators who will have to contest from other seats in the upcoming civic body elections as their seats have been reserved for women candidates for the next election.
The BMC on Tuesday held the lottery for reservations in all the 236 municipal seats, including nine new electoral wards, that were created after the BMC carried out a fresh delimitation exercise of all municipal wards earlier in February.
After the delimitation drive, an electronic mapping of all the 236 electoral seats was carried out to create enumeration blocks.
According to the State Election Commission (SEC) notification, the seats that were unreserved during the 2007, 2012 and 2017 elections have been kept in the reservation category this year as per a rotational policy. For example, an unreserved seat from the last election has been reserved for a woman candidate this year as per the rotational drive.
The BMC rules also state that if the population of any electoral constituency is more than 50 percent of the entire municipal ward then that constituency will not be kept under the reservation category.
Out of the 236 seats, 118 have been reserved for women candidates, 15 have been reserved for SC and two are reserved for ST candidates. No seats were reserved for the Other Backward Class (OBC) this year as the Supreme Court struck down the reservation last year for the want of the empirical data.
Out of the 109 open seats that are reserved only for women, 86 were selected on a rotational basis from the previous elections, while the remaining 23 seats were chosen by conducting the lottery on Tuesday.
The lottery draw was held in presence of the municipal commissioner and state-appointed administrator Iqbal Singh Chahal. Lottery papers were drawn by children from municipal schools.
Senior officials of the civic body said that citizens can submit their suggestions and objections till June 6 and the final notification will be published on June 15 after a public hearing of suggestions and objections.
Seats of Kishori Pednekar, former mayor and senior Shiv Sena corporator and Vishakha Raut, former leader of the house in BMC, fall under the open category, which indicates that both can contest from these seats.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Ravi Raja, who has been a corporator from Ward no 182 since 1992, said that reservation of the seats was done strategically by the ruling Shiv Sena.
“Out of 29 Congress corporators, the wards of as many as 21 corporators have been changed after Tuesday’s lottery. This has been done deliberately by the ruling Sena and civic administrator to damage our prospects in the forthcoming elections,” said Raja, whose party is currently the opposition in the BMC
BJP leader Vinod Mishra said that his ward has been split into three wards as part of the ward delimitation drive. “The changing of wards is not going to affect us in the next elections as our party will come out with flying colours from whichever seat we contest,” he said.
Contesting from other wards due to changes in the reservation jeopardises the corporators’ winning prospects.
SP leader Rais Shaikh, whose ward has been split and is presently reserved for women, said “The changing of ward ahead of the election is a routine phenomenon which creates a lot of hindrances to the elected representatives in the long run. When the ward of a candidate is changed, he will have to start working from scratch again in its new ward. That is the reason why most of the politicians don’t prefer contesting ward elections in the long-term.”
BJP’s Prabhakar Shinde alleged that the ruling Sena jointly with the civic administration carried out the delimitation and seat reservation to gain electoral advantage.
“During the delimitation drive, new wards were carved out from strongholds of opposition parties to make sure that the votes get divided. However, this is not going to work in the next elections as BJP is going to win on merit,” said Shinde, former BJP corporator and group leader of the party in BMC.
Meanwhile, political analyst Dr Surendra Jondhale, said that keeping the changing of seats in mind, the politicians should now work towards expanding their identity beyond their electoral wards from time to time.
“The changing of seats is like giving feedback to the politicians. They should keep their prodigy ready for contesting in the wards on their behalf and on the other hand, they must also ensure that their identity is not only limited within their said constituencies,” said Jondhale.
The schedule for the election to the BMC and other municipal corporations is yet to be announced.