Results of Maharashtra Local Polls Pushed to December 21

The Maharashtra local body polls, which would send representatives to 246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats, were last held in 2017. The five-year term was to end in 2022, but then the pandemic came calling. After that, legal challenges to OBC reservations further delayed it. The government seemed to be in no hurry. It took the Supreme Court to set a deadline for the elections, and the date was finally announced as December 2 this year.

Days before that, for reasons ranging from nomination process disputes and a variety of court cases, the State Election Commission decided that around 24 of the local bodies would have their elections on December 20. For the rest, the date remained as earlier, and results would be out the next day, December 3. The saga of delays however still had a final twist. On Tuesday, even as voting was ongoing, the Bombay High Court ruled that counting and declaration of results should happen only after all the voting is done. So now, for all the political parties, the suspense will continue till December 21.

The rationale of the court was that if results for most of the bodies became known, then it would influence those voting on December 20. None of the political parties are happy with the order.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of the Bharatiya Janata Party said he had never seen anything like this in his political career of 25 years, but there was nothing to do but accept it even though it was unfair on those who had been working hard for the campaigning. Rohit Pawar, leader of the Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party, posted on X saying that the court ruling was an affirmation of the election commission's bungling and that the BJP, along with the Election Commission, is equally responsible for the chaos.