Maharashtra local body elections: How the Bombay High Court holds the key

The Bombay High Court has become a battleground for Maharashtra's long-delayed civic body elections. It will hear a cascade of petitions on everything from ward delimitation and reservation to nomination rejections and unopposed victories.

This follows the deadline of January 31, 2026 set by the Supreme Court for completing all local body elections in the State. The deadline was extended by two weeks to mid-February following the State Election Commission's request.

With voting for 29 municipal corporations - including the high-stakes Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) - scheduled for January 15 and zilla parishad elections set for February 5, the judiciary finds itself threading a needle between democratic urgency and procedural fairness.

By late November, the benches of the High Court had more than 100 petitions challenging various aspects of the local body elections.

That month, Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar consolidated all civic poll petitions filed across multiple benches of Mumbai, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Kolhapur to the Principal Bench. At present, he shares a Division Bench with Justice Gautam Ankhad.

A huge chunk of petitions challenged the State government's delimitation exercise and its method of rotating reserved seats. Delimitation is the process of dividing municipal areas into electoral wards and redrawing their boundaries to ensure equal population representation.

The petitioners argue that the State's approach violates constitutional principles of local autonomy by treating upcoming elections as the "first election" under new Rule 12, of the Maharashtra Municipal Councils and Nagar Panchayats Election Rules, effectively resetting the reservation cycle that has operated since 1996.

The core controversy centers on whether seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes should be reset midway through their rotation term or continue their existing cycle.

The State government countered by arguing that recent restructuring of rural local body boundaries necessitated a fresh delimitation exercise.

The Court has sought affidavits from both the State Election Commission and the Maharashtra government.

Nomination form rejection emerged as a particularly contentious issue. On January 8, the Division Bench set aside a returning officer's order rejecting BJP candidate Nilesh Bhojane's nomination for Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation's Ward 17A, declaring the rejection "illegal" and directing his name be included in the accepted candidates' list.​

However, not all challenges succeeded. On January 9, the Bench dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) claiming mass rejection of nomination forms for Mumbai civic body elections on frivolous and hyper-technical grounds. The Municipal Commissioner-cum-District Election Officer had argued that the petitioner lacked legal standing.​

Two petitions alleging that a returning officer acted at the behest of Assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar remain pending. Eight candidates, including MNS member Baban Mahadik and Congress's Vaishali Gawde, sought directions to accept their nominations for Narwekar's Colaba assembly constituency wards on January 6.

In November 2025, the High Court dismissed four petitions challenging voters' lists for local body polls. The petitions questioned the inclusion and exclusion of certain names from electoral rolls, but the Court refused to entertain these challenges on the eve of the elections.​

The phenomenon of 69 candidates winning unopposed has triggered significant legal challenges. A petition filed in early January 2026 sought a court-monitored probe into what it characterised as "suspicious mass withdrawal" of nomination papers.

The plea noted that 453 candidates (about 20% of the total candidates) withdrew their nominations on January 2, 2026, the last date for withdrawal.​

The State Election Commission had ordered an inquiry into these unopposed elections and issued directions on January 2 and 3, 2026 that results of unopposed elections should not be formally declared until the inquiry is completed. However, the petitioners claimed that these instructions were ignored by returning officers in several municipal wards.​

Another PIL sought enforcement of the NOTA (None of the Above) option in unopposed elections, arguing that declaring uncontested winners without actual voting effectively denies voters their right to choose NOTA.

However, on January 14, the High Court dismissed multiple petitions challenging unopposed municipal election results, including those filed by MNS leader Avinash Jadhav and three others raising concerns over NOTA.​

In a crucial December 2 order, the Nagpur bench restrained the State Election Commission from announcing first-phase municipal council and nagar panchayat results on December 3, directing combined counting on December 21.

The Bench of Justices Anil Kilor and Rajnish Vyas held that phase-wise declaration would compromise electoral fairness and affect subsequent polls. The Court prohibited exit poll publications until voting concluded on December 20, maintaining the model code of conduct until final results.

First-phase results for Nagpur, Kolhapur and Aurangabad regions were consequently declared on December 20.