 "Mumbai, polls, election, Bombay")
Shiv Sena is currently leading in 85 wards in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls in Maharashtra, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trailing with a lead in 52 wards, the Congress leading in 16 wards, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in six wards, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in nine wards and others in five wards, according to ANI. The total number of wards under the BMC is 227.
Counting was underway on Thursday for polls to 10 civic bodies, including the cash-rich BMC, and 25 zilla parishads and 283 panchayat samitis across Maharashtra, the results of which are likely to have a bearing on relations between the BJP and the Shiv Sena.
The Congress and the NCP are also in the fray in the polls, dubbed as the 'mini-general elections'.
The prime focus is on the cash-rich 227-member BMC, with the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena at the forefront of this battle.
The results after the counting, which began at 10 am today, will determine the fate of 21,620 candidates for 5,777 seats up for grabs in the elections, which were held in two phases.
Nearly 56 per cent voters had exercised their right to franchise during the elections to the 10 municipal corporations held on Tuesday. The Mumbai civic body BMC recorded about 55 per cent turn-out.
Besides, 69 per cent of the electorate cast their votes in the zilla parishads and panchayat samitis.
The stakes are high for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, who led their respective parties from the front and were involved in a high decibel and no-holds-barred campaign, relegating the opposition Congress, NCP and other players like the MNS and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen to the background.
Apart from Mumbai, the municipal corporations which went to the polls were Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.
In Mumbai, the country's financial capital, there are 2,275 candidates.
The big poll focus is on the BMC, retaining control of which is vital for Shiv Sena as the city has remained its prime political space ever since the party's formation in 1966. The Sena has been in power in BMC for over two decades.
In municipal corporations excluding Mumbai, there are multi-member wards where the electorate cast their votes for each of the category in the panel. Each panel has more than two wards.
The districts where elections to 283 panchayat samitis were held are Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Beed, Buldhana, Chandrapur, Gadchiroli, Hingoli, Jalgaon, Jalna, Latur, Nanded, Osmanabad, Parbhani, Wardha, Yavatmal, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Solapur, Nashik, Amravati and Gadchiroli.
