Palghar Civic Body Elections: VVMC Allows Double Voters To Choose Polling Stations

The Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation (VVMC) has allowed voters with duplicate entries (double voters) to fill out a form and choose their preferred polling station. However, the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA) has become aggressive against this decision and has filed a petition directly in the High Court. The hearing for this case is scheduled for December 22nd.

The general elections for the Vasai-Virar Municipal Corporation are to be held after five years. The municipal area has a total of 29 wards. Four corporators will be elected from each of the 28 wards, and three corporators from the 29th ward. The election will be held for a total of 115 seats.

All political parties have started preparing for the elections, and the municipal administration is also undertaking extensive planning.

Meanwhile, the VVMC recently published the draft voter list. It includes a total of 11,27,640 voters. This list has been prepared based on the Assembly constituency voter list valid until July 1, 2025. However, it has been revealed that approximately 52,378 names in this published list are duplicates (double entries).

After the political parties examined the ward-wise draft voter list, they pointed out a large number of duplicate names. The Bahujan Vikas Aghadi has raised objections to as many as 80,000 duplicate names and demanded their cancellation. The issue of duplicate voters has created a major dilemma.

To resolve this issue, the Election Commission has allowed voters with duplicate names to vote at any one polling station. Accordingly, the VVMC has published a list of 50,000 duplicate voters on its website. The municipality has appealed to the concerned voters to check their names and choose the one polling station where they wish to cast their vote.

Despite this, the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi has become even more aggressive on this issue. BVA spokesperson Ajeev Patil has filed a petition in the High Court regarding this matter. The petition will be heard on December 22, 2025.

Patil said, “Instead of merely taking an undertaking form, it is necessary to directly cancel the duplicate names.  Since there are a large number of duplicate names in one ward, the possibility of misuse of these votes cannot be ruled out.”