Shivsena UBT leader Aaditya Thackeray during an interview with The Hindu at his residence in Mumbai on Wednesday.
| Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini

Raising apprehensions about whether the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections will be held this year, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray said he hoped for a transparent and fair process were they to be held.

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He listed three priorities of the party for the municipal polls. “The biggest priority is fixing BEST (Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport Undertaking), which is the city’s second biggest lifeline after the local trains. Then, fixing the schools and the healthcare system, and thereafter working on the roads and footpaths, the connectivity,” the Sena (UBT) leader told The Hindu in an interview.

During a week when the arrival of monsoon brought Mumbai to its knees, he accused the BMC of “wilful apathy”. “The mechanisms didn’t fail. I observed that none of the pre-monsoon meetings with the 17 agencies were held this year,” he said.

The corporation is currently being run by a Maharashtra government-appointed administrator, the Mumbai Municipal Commissioner, with municipal elections pending for the last three years. The Supreme Court recently directed the Maharashtra State Election Commission to hold all pending local body elections within the next four months. The elections haven’t been notified as yet.

“For the last three years, the BMC has been running like a headless chicken and this headless chicken is laying golden eggs for the government,” Mr. Thackeray said, adding that the corporation, which once had a surplus of over ₹90,000 crore, now has a liability of almost ₹2 lakh crore.

(The interview can be watched on the show ‘Pulse Maharashtra’ on The Hindu’s YouTube channel)