TOP CONG LEADERS SUFFERED DEFEAT

While the NCP was on a roll having won

the Lok Sabha and assembly elections earlier and strengthening itself in the civic elections, the Congress had suffered a major setback. Its tally was down by 2 from the previous house. It was not even the main Opposition party having been relegated to the third place by the Shiv Sena.

Worse,

some of its top local leaders suffered defeats. The then Navi Mumbai Congress president Namdeo Bhagat, a close associate of the then Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, lost to Shiv Sena candidate Dilip Ghodekar from Nerul by almost 500 votes. Opposition leader Ramakant Mhatre, a close confidante of former chief minister Ashok Chavan lost to NCP candidate Balkrishna Patil in Ghansoli.

The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance,

a first for the civic polls, couldn’t stop the NCP from winning a majority but managed to improve its position. The Shiv Sena had 14 members in the previous House, with more than half of its corporators later switching allegiance to the NCP. Yet, the party managed to increase its tally to 15.

The BJP’s lone corporator

in the last House Bharat Jadhav of Nerul, had crossed over to the NCP, but the party managed to get another seat in Turbhe, with its candidate Vijaya Gharat defeating NCP’s Babytai Patil, whose family has held sway in the region for decades.

The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)

failed to win even a single seat.