Maharashtra: Uddhav Thackeray says local body polls should be held after voter lists are ‘cleaned’

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Monday reiterated that local body elections in Maharashtra should be conducted only after the electoral rolls are cleaned up, The Hindu reported.

He also refuted the allegations by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is part of the ruling Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra, that the Opposition was doing “appeasement politics” by alleging irregularities in the voter list.

Earlier in the day, BJP leader Ashish Shelar had accused Uddhav Thackeray and his cousin, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, of “sowing the seeds of Hindu-Muslim division” by flagging multiple entries of Hindu voters while refraining from naming voters from other communities, The Times of India reported.

The local body elections in the state must be conducted by January 31, 2026, as directed by the Supreme Court.

Uddhav Thackeray's remarks came two days after Raj Thackeray raised the issue of bogus voters at a joint rally of the Maha Vikas Aghadi and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.

On Saturday, Raj Thackeray had said that local body polls in the state should not be held while there are “bogus voters” on the electoral rolls. Uddhav Thackeray had echoed his cousin's statement.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi comprises Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena, the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.

During a press conference in Mumbai on Monday, Uddhav Thackeray said that the Election Commission must first rectify errors such as duplicate and bogus entries in the voters' list.

“Neither Shiv Sena nor any Opposition party has referred to any bogus voter by religion,” the newspaper quoted Uddhav Thackeray as saying. “We are not opposing elections, but want them to be held only after the rolls are cleaned.”

He also accused the Election Commission and the Union government of being “scared of Gen Z”, claiming that those turning 18 after July 1 would be deprived of their right to vote since the poll panel had fixed the date as the cut-off date for eligibility in the upcoming local body polls.

Uddhav Thackeray also asked voters to visit Uddhav Sena branch offices to verify whether their names are correctly listed and if any errors or omissions have occurred.

“We are opening centres for voters' convenience,” The Times of India quoted Uddhav Thackeray as saying. “People must check whether they can vote in their polling stations so that we know how many youngsters are being deprived of voting rights.”

On Saturday, Raj Thackeray alleged that 4,500 voters who were registered in Thane's Kalyan rural, Dombivali, Bhiwandi and Murbad constituencies cast their votes in Mumbai's Malabar Hill in elections last year.

He did not specify if he was speaking about the Lok Sabha elections or the Assembly polls.

“So it is clear that they voted twice,” Thackeray was quoted as saying. “It is clear that there are lakhs of such voters in Maharashtra who have done double voting.”

Raj Thackeray added that scrutiny by his party workers showed discrepancies in voter lists in Mumbai.

He claimed that in the Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat, total voters registered till July 1 are 17,29,456, of which 62,370 were “suspicious” voters.

In Mumbai North West, the total number of voters was 16,74,861, and party workers found that 7,231 of them were “suspicious”, added Raj Thackeray.

The total voters in Mumbai North East were 15,90,710, of which 92,983 were “suspicious” and in Mumbai North Central, 63,740 were “suspicious” voters of the total 1,68,148, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief claimed.

In July, the Election Commission stated that there is no category of “suspicious voters” under the 1951 Representation of the People Act.

Last week, Uddhav Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray alleged discrepancies in the voter list of his Worli Assembly constituency.

He had claimed that after the Lok Sabha elections and before the Assembly elections, 16,043 voters were added and 5,661 names were deleted in Worli.

The major anomalies included 502 voters with the same names as their fathers, 720 voters with a father's name from a different community, 133 duplicate names with the same voter ID number, 643 voters with gender mismatch, 113 voters more than 100 years of age, 4,177 voters with an improper or non-existent address, and 3,335 voters living in 214 homes.

In the Lok Sabha elections held in 2024, the Maha Vikas Aghadi won 30 of the 48 seats in the state. The remaining 18 seats were won by the ruling Mahayuti alliance comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena group led by former Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the NCP faction led by Ajit Pawar.

In the Assembly polls held months later in November, the Mahayuti alliance won 230 seats. The Maha Vikas Aghadi won 46 seats.

The Congress and party leader Rahul Gandhi have repeatedly alleged that there was “industrial-scale rigging involving the capture of our national institutions” in the Maharashtra Assembly elections.

In February, the Congress had urged the Election Commission to explain how the number of registered voters (9.7 crore) for the Maharashtra polls was more than the adult population of the state (9.5 crore).

The Election Commission had said at the time that attempts to defame it by parties that got an unfavourable verdict from voters were “completely absurd”.

Also read: Voter rolls, not just EVMs: How Opposition is coming to a new understanding on BJP's alleged rigging

Source: Scroll
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