Mumbai records 32 percent voter turnout till 1.30 p.m. in BMC polls

Mumbai recorded a voter turnout of 32.1 percent till 1.30 p.m. in the elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday.

Polling for 227 seats of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai will continue till 5:30 pm where a total of 17,331 candidates are in the fray for 3,210 seats in 10 municipal corporations.

The civic body polls witnessed voters from political, Bollywood and sports fraternity.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena Party chief Uddhav Thackeray were among the many who cast their votes. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray also cast his vote earlier in the day.

The Bollywood fraternity including Anushka Sharma, John Abraham, Ranveer Singh, Shraddha Kapoor, Varun Dhawan , veteran actress Rekha, director Subhash Ghai also stepped out to cast their vote.

Former Indian cricketer and Rajya Sabha MP Sachin Tendulkar also cast his vote, along with his wife Anjali.

The local body polls will be witnessing a high pitch battle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiv Sena, the Congress, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Meanwhile, police has beefed up security across the city ahead of the polls and are maintaining a strong vigil to avert any untoward incident across the 7,304 polling centers.