For the ruling Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), who are contesting in an alliance, the result would decide the fate of their partnership, ahead of 2014 Assembly elections. Ministers and leaders from both the parties were quite loud in hurling abuses and critising each other during the campaigning despite NCP chief and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar's call to exercise restraint.
NCP had not hidden its ambitions to emerge as the single largest party in the 288 member assembly.
As far as the NCP is concerned, the elections are crucial to consolidate its presence in Mumbai where the party's presence is insignificant. More importantly, for Pawar, whose friendship with Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray is over four decades old, it is a time to convince voters that he or the NCP did not mix friendship with politics and was not having any back-stage understanding.
The February 16 elections will be an acid test for the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, too, which has been ruling the country's civic body for 16 years. Both parties have witnessed increasing pressure to try their luck by going solo in the coming Assembly elections.
The timing is crucial as two phases of polling in Uttar Pradesh is over and Congress hopes to improve its performance in the state.
The administration of Municipal corporation is controlled by officers who report to the State Government, and the Corporators elected by the people have a limited say, they can at best follow up on projects and approve major plans presented by the Administration. Also over the years, the bulk of the infrastructure projects like, metro, sea links, monorail, flyovers and maintenance of arterial roads and slum rehab etc has been handed over to state government agencies like the MMRDA, MSRDC, Slum Rehab authority. So to blame the BMC and the parties ruling it for all the ills of the city is not fair. The State Government controlled by Cong-NCP for more than a decade too has failed in ensuring that important infra projects are implemented on time.
Yes the ruling parties of the BMC need to be thrown out but a mention also needs to made of the Bus services and Electric supply of the BMC are relatively better than other metro, also the BMC run speciality hospitals like KEM are also ok
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