Maharashtra Assembly Election 2019, Wadala profile: Six-term MLA Kalidas Kolambar looking at relection after jumping ship from Congress to BJP

Wadala Assembly Election 2019 | The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates for the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls. Voting for the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly will be held on 21 October in a single phase. The counting of votes and final results will be declared on 24 October. The term of the Devendra Fadnavis-led current Maharashtra Assembly will end on 9 November.

The notification and nomination process for the Assembly election was issued on 27 September. Candidates filed their nominations latest by 4 October. The scrutiny of nomination papers was done on 5 October and the last date to withdraw candidature from the electoral battle was 7 October. A total of 95,473 polling stations will be set up for over 8.95 crore voters in Maharashtra.

There is one reserved seat under Scheduled Caste category in the Mumbai city district — Dharavi.

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Representational image. PTI

Constituency Name—Wadala
Constituency Number— 180
District Name— Mumbai City
Total Electors—203881
Female Electors—97560
Male Electors— 106321
Third Gender— 0
Reserved—None

Results in previous elections—The incumbent MLA and Congress candidate Kalidas Nilkanth Kolambkar won this seat in past two consecutive assembly elections. In 2014, he won this seat with 38,540 votes against BJP's Mihir Chandrakant Kotecha who received 37,740 votes. In 2009, he defeated Shiv Sena's Digambar Dattaram Kandarkar with a margin of over 25,000 votes.

From 1990 to 2004, Kolambkar was elected as the Shiv Sena MLA four times in a row, thrice as a Congress candidate, including in a byelection when he defected from the Sena to the Congress. Wadala is dominated by slum pockets and chawls, but also has a middle class and affluent population. It also has the Bombay Development Department (BDD) chawls, whose revamp has been a long-standing demand.

In 2019 elections, the incumbent MLA and former Congress candidate Kolambkar will be representing BJP in this constituency. Others challenging him or this seat are Congress candidate Shivkumar Uday Lad and Anand Mohan Prabhu of MNS.