BJP sweeps Maha civic polls, Sena way behind
The BJP continued its winning streak this year by emerging victorious in the Mira Bhayander Municipal Corporation elections on Monday.
The party won a 61 seats, more than double its tally of 29 seats in 2012, in the 95-member civic body elections held on Sunday.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) did not win a single seat while the Shiv Sena and Congress won 22 and 10 seats.
The BJP win has been a major setback for the Shiv Sena, which has been thrown out of power it shared jointly with the former in this satellite city. The Sena was counting on Gilbert Mendonsa, a local leader it had poached from the NCP. But observers said lack of coordination and infighting among key leaders threw the party out of power.
What also cost the Sena is the BJP’s successful mobilisation of Gujarati, Marwari and north Indian voters, who accounted for more than 40% of total voters of 12 lakh. Political observers said this countered the Marathi vote bank, which voted largely in favour of the Shiv Sena.
The Congress and NCP failed to fight the elections with their full strength, and seemed to have accepted that it was a losing battle long before the elections were announced.
Though state chief of Congress Ashok Chavan held two meetings in the elections, the responsibility was mainly on the shoulders of party’s former MLC Muzaffar Hussain.
He restricted himself to certian areas, which led to the defeat of the party even in its core areas such as Shanti Nagar and Sheetal Nagar. NCP did not even bother to distribute basic election material such as party flags, badges and scarves.