The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) on Tuesday renewed its demand to rectify “faulty” electoral rolls after the State Election Commission (SEC) announced the schedule for Maharashtra local body polls 2025. The ruling Mahayuti alliance dismissed the demand, calling it an excuse by the opposition to delay elections amid fears of an impending defeat, news agency PTI reported.
MVA, comprising the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), and Congress, alleged that the Election Commission was proceeding with the elections without addressing serious discrepancies in the voters’ list, including duplication of names. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray went a step further, accusing the poll body of acting as a “puppet of the government”.
Defending the process, leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance said updating voter lists was a continuous process and expressed confidence in sweeping the December 2 elections for 246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats, PTI reported. Counting of votes for the nagar panchayats and parishads will be held on December 3.
Minister Uday Samant said the Mahayuti was fully prepared for the elections, while BJP’s Subhash Deshmukh described local body polls as “a test of the grassroots cadre’s hard work”. He downplayed claims of voter list errors, stating that duplicate entries were regularly updated due to migration and deaths.
From the opposition, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Ambadas Danve demanded that duplicate names be deleted, not just marked, and confirmed that Uddhav Thackeray’s tour of flood-hit Marathwada will go ahead despite the Model Code of Conduct, PTI reported.
Congress state president Harshwardhan Sapkal accused the EC of functioning under government pressure, calling its conduct “dubious”. He demanded the deletion of duplicate entries instead of marking them with stars. NCP (SP) leader Anil Deshmukh echoed similar concerns, stating that the EC was “working under pressure from the ruling alliance”.
Reiterating the opposition’s charge, Raj Thackeray said, “If the Election Commission cannot address basic questions about duplicate registrations and irregularities, what is its purpose?”
On November 1, the MVA and MNS had held a protest march, `Satyacha Morcha (March for Truth)`, demanding rectification of voter list irregularities such as wrongful deletions, duplications, and false additions before the polls are conducted.
(With PTI inputs)
