There is something deeply unsettling about being told you live in a democracy and then quietly being informed, without anyone saying it aloud, that your vote is no longer required. The early January 2026 elections of the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation did exactly that. Twenty candidates were declared elected unopposed. No rallies. No EVMs. No queues of voters under the winter sun. Just a declaration on paper that nearly one-sixth of the city’s civic body was already decided before the public could even enter the picture.
On the surface, it looked legal. On paper, it looked procedural. But politically, democratically, and morally, it felt like something far more disturbing. Out of 122 seats, the ruling Mahayuti alliance walked away with 20 seats, almost 16% of the corporation, without a single vote being cast. Fourteen went to the Bharatiya Janata Party, and six to Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction). What makes this extraordinary is not just the number, but the method. Every opposing candidate, cutting across parties and ideologies, either withdrew or had their nominations rejected before the January 1 deadline.
Democracy is supposed to be noisy. Elections are messy by design. Disagreements, debates, dissent, that chaos is the price we pay for representation. What happened in KDMC was the opposite. A silent clearing of the field. Seven candidates from Shiv Sena (UBT), five from MNS, six from Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar faction), one from Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction), and two from the Indian National Congress vanished from the contest. When opposition disappears in bulk, people are forced to ask whether it left willingly or was pushed out.
Several of the names declared winners weren’t political unknowns. Harshal More of Shiv Sena won Ward 28A unopposed; he is also the son of a sitting MLA, Rajesh More. In Ward 24, Ramesh Mhatre, Vishwanath Rane, and Vrushali Joshi walked in without resistance. BJP’s Asavari Navare and Rekha Chaudhary became the first winners declared from Dombivli and Kalyan. Meanwhile, Manoj Gharat, the MNS Dombivli city president, withdrew his nomination, effectively handing over the seat. Each case could be explained away. Together, they form a pattern too neat to ignore.
The opposition has called this episode many things, but the word that keeps returning is “scam.” Sanjay Raut alleged that candidates were bribed with amounts as high as ₹5 crore to withdraw. Not whispered. Not hinted at. Stated openly. He spoke of bags of cash, of last-minute phone calls, of power being exercised quietly and effectively. Abu Azmi echoed similar claims, saying withdrawals followed money distribution. These are not fringe voices. These are senior political figures accusing the system itself of being compromised.
Beyond money, there were accusations of administrative manipulation. Opposition leaders claimed that returning officers rejected their nominations for trivial clerical errors while overlooking similar mistakes in Mahayuti forms. Democracy, when filtered through bureaucracy, depends entirely on fairness. When the rulebook is bent selectively, procedure becomes a weapon. Add to this reports of candidates being “persuaded” by ministers and local strongmen, and the line between consent and coercion begins to blur.
The controversy did not end with outrage. It moved to the courts. Activist Shrinivas Ghanekar filed a petition arguing something fundamental: that even if there is only one candidate, an election must still be held. The voter, he said, has a constitutional right not just to choose a candidate, but to reject one to press NOTA. The presence of a NOTA button on the EVM becomes meaningless if the election itself is cancelled. The Aam Aadmi Party went a step further, demanding that NOTA be treated as a “virtual candidate,” and that if it receives more votes than the sole contestant, the election should be held again.
This is not just a technical argument. It strikes at the heart of democratic participation. If citizens cannot even express disapproval, what remains of choice? The State Election Commission of Maharashtra, led by Commissioner Dinesh Waghmare, acknowledged the seriousness of the issue.
The SEC stated it would not formally certify all 20 unopposed winners until inquiry reports on possible coercion or allurement were submitted. That pause itself speaks volumes. Institutions rarely hesitate unless something feels off.
Adding another layer to the chaos was the boycott by the 27 Villages Struggle Committee, a group demanding a separate municipality. Their decision to stay away from the elections affected multiple panels and indirectly helped facilitate unopposed wins. It is a reminder that democratic breakdowns rarely have a single cause. They are accumulations of protest, of power, of silence, of fatigue.
The ruling alliance, predictably, dismissed the allegations. Eknath Shinde described the unopposed wins as an endorsement of governance and welfare schemes like “Ladki Bahin.” BJP spokesperson Keshav Upadhye pointed to similar unopposed victories across other corporations, framing it as momentum, not manipulation. Their argument is simple: if the opposition collapses, that is not our fault. But democracy is not a corporate takeover where the strongest brand absorbs the rest. It is meant to be competitive by design.
What makes the KDMC episode particularly dangerous is not just what happened, but what it normalizes. If unopposed victories become routine, voting itself becomes symbolic. Booths become props. Citizens become spectators. The message is subtle but clear: participation is optional; outcomes are not. Once people internalize that belief, voter apathy stops being a problem and starts being a consequence.
India’s democracy has survived because it has always been loud, contested, and imperfect. The moment elections start happening without voters, that tradition fractures. Whether courts intervene, whether the SEC acts decisively, or whether this episode fades into the news cycle will determine more than the fate of 20 seats. It will decide whether future elections are fought in public or settled quietly in backrooms.
Because the day people truly believe there is no point going to the booth is the day democracy stops needing to be rigged. It simply withers on its own.
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