Counting of votes for high-stakes civic polls in Maharashtra begins; all eyes on Mumbai
Mumbai (PTI): Counting of votes polled in elections to 29 municipal corporations across Maharashtra began on Friday morning with the spotlight on Mumbai, where the BJP-led Mahayuti bloc is locked in a prestige battle with the reunited Thackeray cousins for control of India's richest civic body.
Polling for 2,869 seats spread across 893 wards in these municipal corporations, including 227 in Mumbai, took place on Thursday. As many as 15,931 candidates are in the fray in the 29 civic corporations, which had 3.48 crore eligible voters.
Around 50 per cent polling was recorded in the 29 municipal corporations, State Election Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare said after the end of voting.
A voter turnout of 52.94 per cent was recorded in the Mumbai civic polls, down from 55.53 per cent in the last elections in 2017, officials said on Friday.
In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), whose annual budget is over Rs 74, 400 crore, 1,700 candidates are vying for 227 seats in elections being held after a four-year delay. Except for Mumbai, the other urban bodies have multi-member wards.
These were the first BMC polls since the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena when Eknath Shinde, now Deputy Chief Minister, broke away with a majority of the party's MLAs and allied with the BJP to become the chief minister.
The undivided Shiv Sena held sway over India's richest civic body for 25 years (1997-2022). The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance, which also includes the Shiv Sena, is hoping for a clear majority to rule the civic body.
In a significant political turn of events ahead of the elections, estranged cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, heading Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS, respectively, reunited last month after two decades in their bid to consolidate Marathi votes even as rival NCP factions forged a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.
The Congress, once a formidable political force in Maharashtra, asserted its presence in Mumbai by stepping out of the shadow of its Maha Vikas Aghadi allies - Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP). The grand old party joined hands with Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) and the Rashtriya Samaj Paksh in the state capital.
Elections to the 29 municipal corporations were held after a gap of several years, with terms of most of them having ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine fall in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the most urbanised belt in India.
Voting took place in these municipal corporations: Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayandar, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.
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IMF to assess economic damage in Sri Lanka post Cyclone Ditwah
Colombo (PTI): An assessment team from the IMF will visit Sri Lanka from January 22 to 28 to assess the damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah.
The International Monetary Fund team will explore how it can best assist Sri Lanka in its recovery efforts, including by resuming the Extended Fund Facility-supported programme and offering policy advice and technical assistance to promote resilience and sustainable growth.
“An IMF staff team will visit Sri Lanka from January 22 to January 28, 2026, to hold discussions with the authorities on the size and scope of the damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah. The findings of the mission will feed into subsequent discussions on the IMF-supported programme," Evan Papageorgiou, IMF Mission Chief for Sri Lanka said in a statement.
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During the visit, the IMF team will engage with government officials and relevant stakeholders to understand the full impact on infrastructure, livelihoods, and economic stability.
The visit comes as the IMF said it would be giving Sri Lanka USD 200 million to help fund recovery.
The IMF has held up its fifth review of the USD 2.9 billion bail out until next month. The sixth tranche would realise about USD 330 million.
Cyclone Ditwah, which struck Sri Lanka in late November, has caused an estimated USD 4.1 billion in direct physical damage to buildings and contents, agriculture and critical infrastructure, according to a World Bank Group Global Rapid Post-Disaster Damage Estimation (GRADE) report released in December.
This damage is equivalent to about 4 percent of Sri Lanka’s GDP.
The cyclone, among the most intense and destructive in Sri Lanka’s recent history, severely affected close to 2 million people and 500,000 families across all 25 districts, disrupting livelihoods, essential services, and the broader economy.
