- Elections of nine other Municipal Corporations in the State — Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri Chanchwad, Akola, Amravati, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, and Solapur — will be held on the same day i.e February 21. Counting of votes will take place on February 23. Nominations start on January 27.
- Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections will be in two phases – February 16 and 21.
- High Court has stayed Nagpur Zilla Parishad elections.
Nagpur: The State Election Commission on Wednesday set the ball rolling for Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) elections by announcing the much-awaited schedule. Accordingly, the NMC poll will be held on February 21 and the counting of votes will take place on February 23. Nominations will start from January 27.
Along with Nagpur Municipal Corporation, elections of nine other Municipal Corporations in the State — Mumbai, Pune, Pimpri Chanchwad, Akola, Amravati, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, and Solapur — will be held on the same day i.e February 21. Counting of votes for all the 10 Municipal Corporations will be held on February 23. Nominations start on January 27.
The term of ten Municipal Corporations including Nagpur is ending on March 4.
Addressing a press conference in Mumbai, State Election Commissioner J S Saharia announced the schedule of Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samitis. Since the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court has stayed Nagpur Zilla Parishad election has been postponed. The elections for remaining 25 Zilla Parishads will be held in two phases. In the first phase, polls of 15 Zilla Parishads – Buldana, Yavatmal, Wardha, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Aurangabad, Jalan, Nanded, Parbhani, Hingoli, Beed, Usmanabad, Latur, Jalgaon, and Ahmednagar and 166 Panchayat Samitis will be held on February 16. Nominations can be filed from January 27 to February 1.
In the second face, elections of 11 Zilla Parishads and 118 Panchayat Samitis will be held on February 21. The 11 Zilla Parishads are Amravati, Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Pune, Satara, Sangli, Solapur, Kolhapur, Nashik, Gadchiroli (4 Panchayat Samitis). Nominations will start on February 1 and the last day will be February 6.
Prabhag system:
Barring BMC, other Municipal Corporations will have Prabhag system and SEC has decided to give its final nod to boundaries of Prabhags. Since 50 per cent of seats are reserved for women, half the seats will naturally go to women aspirants while constitutional reservation will also be maintained in each ward.
State Election Commissioner J S Sahariya while declaring time-table of this exercise stated that for Mumbai elections will be held as per single-member ward system while for remaining major Municipal Corporations like Thane, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nagpur, Solapur, Nashik, Akola and Amravati, multi-member wards have been proposed.
In case of Nagpur, the election of civic body will be contested in a prabhag of four councillors. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) will have 37 prabhags and total number of corporators will be 149. Out of total 37, the 36 prabhags will have four members while one prabhag will have five members. The number has been increased due to expansion in NMC area following inclusion of Narsala and Hudkeshwar.
