Maharashtra Local polls:BJP claims of winning maximum seats

In Maharashtra ,the local bodies result brought big smile on BJP face, steady fall in daily Covid case count gives hope to Mumbai for schools to be opened soon and Supreme Court reserves order on plea of 12 MLAs of Maharashtra against their suspension from Assembly. 

Big smile on BJP's face

BJP on Wednesday ended up with the maximum number of seats in Maharashtra’s local body elections in semi-urban and rural areas, closing the gap and racing ahead of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) The BJP has emerged with the most seats across, having won 416 of 1,802 seats. The NCP has won 378 seats, the Sena 301 and the Congress 297, meaning that combined the Maha Vikas Aghadi - with 976 seats - has again defeated the BJP by a massive margin. The coalition has won 57 semi-urban local bodies while the BJP has won 24. The NCP, however, has won 25 nagar panchyats, one more than the 24 won by the BJP. The Shiv Sena and Congress have won 14 and 18 bodies, respectively. In all, the Maharashtra State Election Commission held elections for 1,802 seats in 106 nagar panchayats, 105 seats in two district councils and 210 seats in 15 panchayat samitis. Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil claimed that his party has emerged as the single largest political force in the state and can lead 24 nagar panchayats.

Mumbai records marginal dip in Covid tally

Maharashtra on Wednesday recorded a rise over 4,000 cases in its fresh Covid tally with 43,697 new infections being registered in the last 24 hours. The state had seen 39,207 cases on Tuesday. In Mumbai, however, there was a slight drop with 6,032 new cases being registered during the day. The Covid cases in Mumbai increased by 3.25%  on Tuesday. Commissioner of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation(BMC) Iqbal Singh Chahal said that Mumbai had moved past the peak and the daily Covid-19 case count was expected fall further during the coming days. He also said,” We are planning to reopen schools on January,27”.The single highest day spike reported from Mumbai was of 20,971 cases at 28.9% positivity rate on January 7. It was much more than the second wave peak of 11,573 cases at 23% positivity on April 3 last year. However, the number of deaths and patients who required admission in the hospitals was considerably lower this time. But the third wave with its fast transmission has spread to other districts of the state such as Nashik , which has a 35.4 per cent  seven day positivity rate which  is highest in Maharashtra. As on January 17 , 23 districts including Nashik  were reported to have recorded positivity above 10 per cent. The state reported 214 new cases of the fast-spreading Omicron variant of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, pushing the total tally to 2,074. Of these, 1,091 patients have been discharged following a negative RT-PCR test.

The Case of suspended MLAs

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, January 19,  reserved judgement in the case of petitions by 12 BJP MLAs who were suspended from Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for a period of one year, challenging the resolution dated July 5,2021 passed by the Assembly. The bench of Justices A. M. Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C.T. Ravikumar while reserving judgement asked the parties to submit written statements in one week.