Mumbai, February 9 The BJP and its Mahayuti ally, Shiv Sena, were leading their rivals in the early trends of the local body elections in Maharashtra on Monday, securing a lead in 200 and 137 Zilla Parishad seats, respectively.
Counting of votes for elections to 12 Zilla Parishads and 125 Panchayat Samitis began at 10 am.
While there was no official confirmation from the State Election Commission, TV channels reported that the BJP had secured a lead in 200 out of 731 seats, and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in 137 Zilla Parishad seats by 2 pm.
The NCP was ahead in 120 seats, followed by the Congress with 46 seats, the Shiv Sena (UBT) with 33 seats, the NCP (SP) with 13 seats, and others with 29 seats.
The polls were held on Saturday in 12 Zilla Parishads – Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Pune, Satara, Sangli, Solapur, Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Parbhani, Dharashiv, and Latur – to elect 731 members, along with 1,462 seats in 125 Panchayat Samitis under their jurisdiction.
A total of 2,624 candidates contested the Zilla Parishad polls, and 4,814 candidates were in the fray for the Panchayat Samiti elections.
The results are expected to shape the future course for the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) factions of late Ajit Pawar and party founder Sharad Pawar.
The two factions had put aside their bitter two-year rivalry to contest these local body polls in an informal alliance in Pune, Satara, Solapur, and Sangli, where candidates from both sides contested under the original 'clock' symbol.