The process of counting for the local body elections in the city of Rajasthan commenced at 8 am on Monday, September 14, 2026.
The election is to be held in a total of 309 urban local bodies of the state, which includes 10 municipal corporations, various municipal councils, and municipal corporations.
The voting in two rounds occurred on September 9 and 11 in a total of 10,245 wards, involving about 1.44 crore voters. As the process of counting is going on, it is evident that the ruling party BJP is leading against the opposition Congress in several major cities, although the results are not definite.
Around 10 am, the early trends revealed that the BJP was ahead of Congress with 105 seats against 65.
The BJP enjoyed early dominance in four out of the seven municipal corporations of the state mentioned in the early trends.
It came to light however that BJP had managed to come up on top of other political parties in at least eight companies of total ten companies: Jaipur, Jodhpur, Alwar, Ajmer, Bhilwara, Bikaner, Kota, and Udaipur.
In the general overall count in the state, BJP won 2,165 wards, while Congress won 1,822 wards, Independents won 1,088 wards, RLP won 42 wards, and BSP won 7 wards.
As the process of counting was still going on, these numbers represented just a snapshot of the results which were expected to undergo changes further with the declaration of other wards.
The Jaipur Municipal Corporation is the largest municipal corporation of the state having 150 wards and was found to be the one of the most definitive strongholds of the BJP during the preliminary stage of the counting.
One example of this was that the counting indicated that the BJP had an edge in 63 wards whereas the Congress had an edge in 44 wards.
There were 2,644 candidates contesting in the District level elections from 690 wards of the district of Jaipur out of which 150 wards were part of the Jaipur Municipal Corporation.
However, things were slightly different in Bikaner. Initial counts indicated a very narrow lead for Congress by 17 wards to BJP's 16 out of 38 wards counted at some point in time, with independent candidates polling 4 wards and RLP bagging 1 ward.
As counting progressed further and more wards out of total 80 wards of the corporation were counted, the result became more tilted in favor of Congress.
The total number of candidates contesting in the Bikaner Municipal Corporation polls was 373. In Bikaner, BJP was attempting to clinch back to back mayoral victory that it won in 2014 and 2019. During the day there were conflicting reports about who was ahead in Bikaner as can be seen from conflicting bulletins of different times during the day - this trend was also seen in Ajmer, Alwar and Jodhpur.
In Kota, where there are 100 wards in the municipal corporation in the state, the BJP leads in 20 out of the initial 24 wards, according to reports, although the overall result depends on the remaining wards and on how independents have performed.
In the case of Bharatpur, however, it was a mixed bag. Of the total of 65 wards, 17 wards were already won by independents, BJP won five, and Congress won three wards.
Besides the city corporations, the municipal committees also witnessed some surprising results at the local level. For instance, in Shrimadhopur Municipal Committee, the BJP won an absolute majority of 19 out of 35 seats, which was sufficient to make its own board of control.
On the other hand, in Nainwa Municipal Committee, Congress came up as the majority party having won 11 out of 25 seats against eight of the BJP.
The local body elections in the city are being watched very closely not only due to the towns in which the elections will be conducted.
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The outcome of the election for the Rajasthan municipalities will serve as a "bellwether for what might happen in Rajasthan's cities before the elections."Cities of the state of Rajasthan include:. Jaipur City Jodhpur City Kota City Bikaner City Udaipur City Ajmer City.
Ward-by-ward tally was to go on up till Monday when a clearer statewide trend would be visible only after all 10,245 wards were accounted for.
Election of mayors, chairpersons of municipal councils, and chairpersons of municipal boards was to take place on September 21, while that of deputy mayors, deputy chairpersons, and vice presidents was to follow the next day.
This process will reveal which political party is the real controller of these civic bodies, a matter different from which political party has won most wards, especially in corporation areas where there is a very close contest among BJP, Congress, and independents.
