Corporators of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have set out to upgrade their political career, banking on their established network in wards and development work as they vie for a ticket to the Assembly polls. About 60 of Mumbai’s 227 corporators have given interviews and are wooing party bosses to make the big career jump from corporator to MLA candidate.

However, barring a few big names, practically all the corporators face challenges from within the party as sitting MLAs, senior political leaders and their prospective heirs (sons and daughters), too, are vying for tickets.

Mumbai has 36 Assembly seats.

In the BMC, group leaders of the Sena (Sunil Prabhu), NCP (Niyaz Wanu), BJP (Ashish Shelar) and Congress (Rajhans Singh) have already expressed a wish to contest the polls and demanded tickets. Standing committee chairperson and senior Sena leader Ravindra Waikar is seeking a ticket for Jogeshwari while another Sena man, Yeshwant Jadhav, wants to fight from Mazgaon. Others from the Sena like Rahul Shewale, Mangesh Satamkar, Bala Sawant, Rajul Patel, Ashish Chemburkar and Shraddha Jadhav are also in the fray.

Congress corporators who want to contest include Ravi Raja, Upendra Doshi, Ramesh Singh, Rajendra Chaubey, Aslam Sheikh, Amin Patel, Pramod Mandrekar, Surekh Khopkar, Sameer Desai, Geeta Yadav, Sheetal Mhatre, Dharmesh Vyas and Kamlesh Rai amongst others.

The NCP’s Ajit Rawrane and Vidya Chawan are looking for a ticket from Dindoshi, while Mangesh Bansode has his eye on Byculla. BJP veteran Yogesh Sagar is keen on Kandivli seat along with Manisha Kayande, Ram Barot, Shailaja Girkar.

... contd.