A significant failure in election oversight has come to light in Nagpur, where a candidate allegedly ineligible under Maharashtra's population-control rules for civic polls was allowed to remain in the electoral contest. The lapse occurred amidst heightened communal rhetoric around population growth ahead of the Amravati local body elections.
How the Oversight Unfolded
The procedural error was discovered only after the crucial stages of nomination scrutiny, symbol allotment, and the statutory window for raising objections had officially closed. The candidate in question is Pushpa Waghmare, a 46-year-old mother of four, who is contesting from Prabhag 36C on a Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) ticket.
Her disqualification stems from Maharashtra's two-child norm for civic elections. The law states that candidates are barred from contesting if they have more than two children born after September 12, 2001. Waghmare has two children born after this cutoff date, making her ineligible. Despite her affidavit clearly declaring her four children, her nomination papers were cleared by election authorities.
A System Failure in Transparency
The lapse remained undetected largely because the Nagpur Municipal Corporation's election panel uploaded candidates' affidavits to the public domain only on January 6. This was a full four days after the January 2 deadline for withdrawal of nominations had passed. By the time the documents were available, rivals and citizens had no legal avenue left to challenge her candidature.
Officials privately admit this delay effectively foreclosed any meaningful public scrutiny. "If the affidavit had been available earlier, objections would certainly have been raised," a senior NMC official stated, describing the episode as a "major lapse" in the scrutiny process.
Laxmi Nagar zone returning officer Suresh Bagle said he would look into the matter but acknowledged the issue surfaced after all statutory timelines had elapsed.
Candidate's Defense and Political Context
Speaking to the media, Pushpa Waghmare claimed she was unaware of the disqualification rule. "I have four children, and two of them were born after September 12, 2001, so I mentioned it. It was also cleared during scrutiny of forms," she said. "No one guided me while I was filing the nomination. If I was aware of this rule, I would not have filed my papers." She added that she had worked hard for the elections and intended to contest the polls.
This incident unfolded against a backdrop of a heated political debate 150 km away in Amravati, where former MP Navneet Rana and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi traded remarks over calls for a "child boom" to increase community populations. The Nagpur case starkly exposed how a basic legal disqualification escaped notice in an election demanding strict compliance.
Prabhag 36C is now witnessing a multi-cornered contest, with BJP's Shivani Dani and Congress nominee Sanjivini Menghare also in the race. Party functionaries across the spectrum agree that the issue would have been legally contested had the affidavit been made public before the withdrawal deadline.
Accountability and Process Concerns
While election officials privately cite workload pressures, critics argue this incident points to weak accountability in a process that demands absolute transparency. The affidavits, meant to empower public scrutiny, were reduced to a mere post-facto formality, uploaded only after the contest was effectively sealed.
This failure raises serious questions about the robustness of the scrutiny process for civic elections in Maharashtra and highlights how crucial deadlines, if mismanaged, can undermine the very integrity of the electoral framework.
