Metro mandates: Key to assembly, LS poll wins?

The civic polls will heat up the political climate in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Delhi and start the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha polls

Given the BJP’s dominance, a seemingly frail Congress, and an AAP too nascent in these two states to land the knockout punch, the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly polls later this year could turn predictable. But the country’s political theatre would offer enough drama with three of its wealthiest civic bodies – Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) – slated to have their respective elections in the next couple of months.

A look at their respective budgets, more than that of several smaller states of India, tells us why the stakes are high. The BMC’s annual budget is Rs 45,959.21 crore (2022-23 estimates), with reserves over Rs 80,000 crore. The MCD’s budget for the current year is Rs 15,276 crore, and of the BBMP, Rs 10480 crore. But election results will affect the politics of the respective states – Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi – and possibly the nation’s too, with the 2024 Lok Sabha polls not too far away.

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The elections to the BMC, eight other corporations in the Mumbai metropolitan region, and cities across Maharashtra, including Pune and Aurangabad, would be a curtain raiser for the LS and assembly elections in the state.

The OBC reservation issue delayed the civic polls, but these could now be held after Diwali. As the Shiv Sena has controlled the BMC for over a quarter century, the polls would indicate if voters consider the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction as the genuine article after the split in that party and the change in government in Maharashtra.

The BBMP elections, meanwhile, will be the precursor to the assembly polls in Karnataka in April 2023. That the elections would come in the wake of the flooding in several parts of Bengaluru is making the BJP nervous. The entry of the AAP into Bengaluru politics will likely make the elections interesting.

However, the Delhi civic polls promise to be the most action-packed. The AAP, running the Delhi government since 2015 and buoyed by its Punjab success earlier this year, is determined to end the BJP’s 15-year control of the MCD. In the 2017 civic polls, the BJP survived thanks to a Congress still in the fight. As the 2020 assembly polls showed, the Congress has collapsed in Delhi, making the BJP nervous.

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The MCD was trifurcated in 2012 and two civic polls were held in 2012 and 2017. The Centre reunified the three into one this year, after making the State Election Commission cancel a press conference it called on March 9 to declare the schedule of the civic polls.

The AAP attributed the reason for unification and postponement of the elections to the BJP’s fear of losing. A delimitation commission was set up, which, contrary to expectations, issued the draft in September, leading to speculation that the polls could be held in December.

The AAP is upbeat about winning on the back of its government’s subsidised power and water supply and mohalla clinics. Lately, it has made the BJP-run MCD’s failure to clean up three garbage ‘hills’ of Delhi its election plank. It remains to be seen if the aggressive BJP campaign around the CBI probe into the alleged irregularities in the AAP government’s excise policy resonates with Delhi’s voters.

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During his recent Mumbai visit, Amit Shah approved the alliance between the BJP and Shinde-faction. Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shinde have had a meeting with the MNS leader Raj Thackeray.

However, the controversy over Maharashtra losing the Rs 1.5 trillion Vedanta-Foxconn project to Gujarat has come at an inopportune time for the alliance. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi has upped the ante on the controversy.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena faction and Sharad Pawar’s NCP are set to join hands in some corporations, including Mumbai. There is no clarity on the Congress’ role. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra could enthuse the party’s rank and file when it would pass through the state.

The civic polls will be held for all the nine corporations, including BMC, of the Mumbai metropolitan region. The big corporations headed for polls include Pune and its sister city Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Nashik, Malegaon, Aurangabad, Nagpur and Amravati.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena has been number one in the BMC for a quarter century. However, the BJP, with 82-seats, ran the Sena, which won 84, close in 2017.

With Archis Mohan, DHNS