BJP will contest next BMC elections alone, install its own mayor: Chandrakant Patil
The development comes weeks after Shiv Sena, which has been controlling the country’s richest civic body for the last 30 years, ended its alliance with BJP (Main Image Courtesy: Flickr/Stephen D’souza)
After failing to form government in the state, the BJP has now set its eyes on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections scheduled in 2022.
The BJP, which has traditionally fought Mumbai civic body elections with its alliance partner Shiv Sena, on Sunday announced that it will contest the upcoming polls on its own and install its own Mayor.
The development comes weeks after the Shiv Sena ended the near three-decade alliance with its saffron ally and formed a government in the state with the support of NCP and Congress.
“The BJP has decided to contest the upcoming BMC elections on its own and come to power. We will have our own Mayor for sure,” state BJP president Chandrakant Patil said.
“By January 1 next year, the BJP will complete most of its party-level appointments including the state president,” he added.
Patil, who succeeded Raosaheb Danve as the state BJP chief after the latter was inducted into the Narendra Modi cabinet as a junior minister, is likely to get a full three-year term in January next year.
The Sena has been controlling the BMC, the country’s richest civic body, from the last 30 years. With a budget of over Rs 30,000 crores, the BMC has also helped fuel the party’s political ambitions for the last few decades.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena has also remained the most dominant party in Mumbai’s civic polls.
However, the 2017 elections were the first time the BJP and Sena contested the polls separately and the latter made massive strides by winning 82 seats, just four less than Sena’s tally of 86.
The BJP, however, refrained from contesting the Mayoral polls and the Sena eventually managed to get its own candidate elected as Mayor with the support of independents. Even now, Sena Corporator Kishori Pednekar is the Mayor of Mumbai.
The two parties fought the October Assembly polls together, winning 161 seats jointly in the 288-member House. However, they ended their alliance last month over a stalemate on the sharing of the CM’s post.
