Counting for local body elections, originally scheduled for December 2, has now been postponed to December 21. Since polling in some areas was deferred until December 20, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday directed the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC) to hold the counting of votes  for all the local body polls on December 21, instead of December 3.

Reacting to the development, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said, “I have been following local body elections for 25 years, but I have never seen elections where polling is deferred a day before voting. This reflects a system's failure. Measures should be taken to ensure such errors are not repeated in the future.”