BMC elections set to place in January 2026; issue of duplication of voters comes to light

India’s richest civic body elections, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), are set to take place in January 2026 in Mumbai. Authorities have already started preparations to ensure the elections go smoothly, fair and transparently. And just before the elections, the issue of duplication of voters has come to light in the financial capital city, Mumbai.

BMC has discovered that 1.10 million voters in Mumbai appear multiple times in the draft voters' list for various wards. This accounts for 10.6 per cent of the 10.34 million voters in the draft list for the upcoming BMC elections, which were released on November 20, 2025. The citizens can submit their objections by November 27.

The BMC has identified repeated entries using specialised software provided by the State Election Commission (SEC). The draft voter list is given by the SEC, with voters with multiple registrations 'star-marked’. The western suburbs have the most duplicate entries with 498,597 voters, followed by the eastern suburbs with 329,216, and the island city with 273,692.

“Large number of duplicate voter entries is due to the city's high floating population and the absence of a special summary revision this year. Areas like Mumbai, Thane, and Raigad, which have high migration rates, reported the most repeated entries,” commented an SEC Official.

The SEC's decision to 'star mark' duplicate entries in the voters' list comes amid rising political tensions over dubious voters. Last month, a massive rally, 'Satyacha Morcha' was also held by Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), emphasising that unless the voters’ list is clean, there should not be any local body polls in the state.

The last BMC elections were held on 21 February 2017. The term of the elected body ended in March 2022, but polls were not held at that time. As a result, the BMC has been functioning under an administrator-appointed structure rather than through elected corporators. March 7, 2025, marked three full years without an elected civic body in Mumbai -an unprecedented stretch in the history of the city's governance.

The delay in holding elections was attributed to several factors. One key issue was the challenge of ward delimitation and concerns over the reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. Additionally, legal cases in the Supreme Court regarding the number of wards and councillors per ward stalled the process. The number of electoral wards for the upcoming polls has been confirmed to stay at 227 for the BMC.