MUMBAI: Unopposed wins in the Mumbai BMC municipal elections have reached the doors of the judiciary. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) has moved court challenging the unopposed election of 66 candidates in the upcoming municipal corporation polls or BMC elections.
On Monday, as reported in the media, MNS leader Avinash Jadhav met State Election Commission (SEC) officials and also filed a petition in the Bombay High Court, questioning and challenging the unopposed future victory on various technical grounds.
Jadhav argued that when the None of the Above (NOTA) option exists, elections cannot be unopposed. “If elections are held, I am sure people will come out in large numbers and press the NOTA button,” the MNS leader said, questioning how anyone can be deprived of exercising their right to vote, merely because there were no opponents or opposing candidates.
Earlier on Saturday, the SEC sought a detailed report on all instances where candidates are unopposed in the upcoming polls across Maharashtra. While the MNS has moved against 66 candidates, the SEC said it does not yet have an exact count of unopposed candidates. However, reports from political parties and the media suggest that around 70 candidates are unopposed as there were no candidates available to contest or could not file their nomination on time or were disqualified due to errors and .
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leads the tally with 44 unopposed candidates, followed by Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena with 22. The Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar camp) has two such candidates, while two others belong to smaller parties or are independent. Reacting to the development earlier, Raj Thackeray said that he had never seen so many candidates elected unopposed in his political career.
Uddhav Thackeray had demanded that the entire election process where the 66 or 70 unopposed candidates have been declared “winners” should be done all over again.
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