Voting for 29 municipal corporations in Maharashtra began Thursday morning, January 15, 2026. The spotlight is on Mumbai, where the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance faces a fierce fight against the reunited Thackeray cousins for control of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Polling started at 7:30 a.m. and will end at 5:30 p.m. across 893 wards with 2,869 seats up for grabs. A total of 3.48 crore voters will decide among 15,931 candidates. The BMC alone has 1,700 candidates contesting 227 seats in elections held after nine years, delayed by four years. Mumbai’s annual civic budget exceeds ₹74,400 crore, making it India’s largest and richest civic body. More than 25,000 police personnel are deployed to ensure smooth voting. Other municipal corporations have multi-member wards. Vote counting will occur on January 16. This is the first BMC election since the 2022 split in Shiv Sena when Eknath Shinde broke away with most MLAs and allied with BJP. The original Shiv Sena ruled BMC for 25 years from 1997 to 2022. In a major political twist, cousins Uddhav and Raj Thackeray, leading Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS respectively, reunited last month after 20 years to combine Marathi votes. Meanwhile, rival NCP factions formed a local alliance in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. The Congress party, once strong in Maharashtra, is now contesting Mumbai independently alongside Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and Rashtriya Samaj Paksh. These elections are held after several years, with many municipal terms ending between 2020 and 2023. Nine corporations are in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, India's most urban area. Voting is underway in 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.