There are widespread speculations about who will be Mumbai's next mayor as the city is set to get a woman mayor from the general category. The quota was finalised based a lottery held on Thursday.
Among the frontrunners to become the mayor of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is Tejasvee Ghosalkar from BJP.
Who is Tejasvee Ghosalkar?
Tejasvee Ghosalkar, who won from BMC Ward 2, is the widow of former corporator Abhishek Ghosalkar. He was fatally shot during a Facebook Live in February 2024.
Ghosalkar first won BMC elections from Ward 1 in 2017 when she fought on a ticket from the undivided Shiv Sena. When the party split, she stayed with Shiv Sena (UBT). But ahead of the latest elections, she joined the BJP on December 15. She won against Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Dhanashree Kolge from Ward 2.
Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT) claimed the quota exercise was rigged and would only benefit the BJP-led Mahayuti. Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and former Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar alleged that the rules to arrive at the decision were changed without informing anyone.
The last two Mumbai mayors were from the open category, so the new mayor should have been from the Other Backward Classes (OBC), she said, adding that ST category was also excluded from the lottery. "We condemn the way the procedure (of lottery) was conducted. The procedure was fixed," she said.
Eight other civic bodies will have mayors from general category, including Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Parbhani, Sangli-Mira-Kupwad, Amravati, Vasai-Virar, Solapur, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Bhiwandi-Nizampur.
Jalgaon, Chandrapur, Ahilyanagar and Akola will have OBC women mayors. Panvel, Ichalkaranji, Kolhapur and Ulhasnagar will have OBC mayors, but they could be men or women.
Thane will have a Scheduled Caste mayor while Jalna and Latur will have women mayors from Scheduled Caste. Kalyan-Dombivli civic body will have a mayor from the Scheduled Tribe category.
