Ahmedabad: Voting was being held on Sunday for elections to Gujarat's Junagadh Municipal Corporation, 66 other municipalities and three taluka panchayats, including Gandhinagar, amid tight security.
Simultaneous by-polls were also being held for Botad and Wankaner municipalities and 124 seats of different other local and urban bodies in the state lying vacant for various reasons.
This is the first electoral contest for local bodies where 27 per cent of seats in panchayats, municipalities and civic corporations have been reserved for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), as per the Gujarat government's decision in 2023.
A total of 5,084 candidates are in the fray and more than 38 lakh persons are eligible to cast a vote in these local body polls.
As per the state election commission, polling started at 7 am and will continue till 6 pm. The counting of votes will be held on February 18.
Voting will not be held in 213 seats in different local bodies, as they have been declared 'uncontested' as only one candidate, that of the ruling BJP, remained in these seats after all others withdrew their nominations.
These include eight out of the 60 seats across 15 wards of the Junagadh Municipal Corporation, where only the BJP candidates remain in the fray after rival Congress and other candidates withdrew from the poll race.
The BJP has said it is set to win the four municipalities of Bhachau, Jafrabad, Bantva and Halol as the number of seats declared 'uncontested' in its favour are higher than the majority required in each of these civics bodies.
The Congress claimed its candidates were threatened to withdraw their nominations, a charge refuted by the BJP.
The Gujarat government in August 2023 increased the OBCs quota threshold in municipal corporations, panchayats and municipalities to 27 per cent from the previous 10 per cent based on the Justice (retd) KS Jhaveri Commission's report.
The existing reservation in local bodies for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes remained unchanged at 14 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, maintaining the overall quota under the 50 per cent ceiling.
The Jhaveri commission was set up in July 2022 after the Supreme Court ruled that reservations for OBCs should be based on their population.
The panel collected and analysed data about the nature and implications of backwardness in local bodies, an exercise necessary for fixing the OBC quota in elections for institutes of local self-governance.
