Mumbai: In the first Maharashtra poll since the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena splintered its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and then underwent a vertical split, the BJP dominated Mumbai, the birthplace of the Shiv Sena, having won 13 seats and with leads in two others. Mumbai has 36 assembly constituencies.
The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won ten seats, accounting for exactly half of its total wins across the state this election, and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena clinched six.
The results indicate that while the people of Maharashtra have recognised the EKnath Shinde-led Shiv Sena as the real Shiv Sena, in Mumbai, the Thackeray-led party still has greater appeal, especially in the Marathi heartland of Dadar, Parel, Sewri and Worli. In Worli, Thackeray scion Aaditya Thackeray trumped the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s Milind Deora with 8,801 votes, with his margin greatly reduced as compared with 2019. In 2019, he had won the seat with 67,427 votes as a candidate of the undivided Shiv Sena.
The Congress, which was born in Mumbai, has won two seats, while Samajwadi Party’s Abu Azmi retained his seat of Mankhurd Shivajinagar. The Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Sana Malik clinched Anushakti Nagar, trouncing Fahad Ahmad of the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
Of the six major parties in the fray in these elections—the Shiv Sena (UBT), the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) as part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, and the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP as part of the Mahayuti alliance—the Shiv Sena (UBT) contested the greatest number of seats in Mumbai.
Within the MVA, the Shiv Sena (UBT) fought 22 seats, followed by the Congress, which fought 10, while the Sharad Pawar-led NCP fielded candidates in three seats.
In the Mahayuti, the BJP fought the greatest number seats at 18, followed by the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, which fielded candidates in 15 seats, while the Ajit Pawar-led NCP fielded its candidates in three constituencies. One constituency, Mankhurd Shivajinagar, had an internal contest, with the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP both fielding candidates.
The results show that the Shiv Sena (UBT)’s campaign on the fear of Mumbai being brought closer to Gujarat by the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre, and the city being controlled by the BJP from Delhi, did not find much favour with the city’s voters.
The party had also campaigned hard on the “Adani-isation of Mumbai”, referring to the Mahayuti government’s decision to allot land across Mumbai to re-house residents ineligible for free in-situ housing under the Dharavi redevelopment project, which it had awarded to the Adani Group. In the Dharavi seat, the MVA took lead with Congress’ Jyoti Gaikwad ahead of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena by over 24,000 votes.
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The Mumbai results
In the Lok Sabha results, the Thackeray brand had prevailed with the Shiv Sena (UBT) winning three of the six parliamentary seats in the city, and losing the fourth seat it had contested by just 48 votes to the Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
The BJP and the Congress had won one seat each.
In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 14 of the 19 seats it had contested in alliance with the BJP. The BJP had won 16 seats.
The Congress, which was born in Mumbai, posted the poorest performance, contesting 29 seats in alliance with the undivided NCP and winning just four. The undivided NCP clinched one seat. One constituency, Mankhurd Shivajinagar, had gone to SP’s Abu Azmi.
Azmi contested again this year, and the MVA did not field a candidate in the seat against him.
This time, the Mankhurd Shivajinagar contest was seen as a key battle in Mumbai with the BJP refusing to campaign for ally Ajit Pawar-led NCP’s candidate Nawab Malik there.
The BJP had in 2021 made allegations against Malik, saying he had made land deals with the underworld. At that time, the BJP and the NCP were rivals and the NCP was still undivided. Malik was later arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on the charges and later released on medical bail.
The Shinde-led Shiv Sena fielded an official candidate against Malik, Suresh Patil.
Malik was in the fourth place in the constituency with Abu Azmi leading by more than 6,000 votes, followed by Ateeque Ahmed Khan of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s Suresh Patil.
The Worli and Mahim seats also saw high-octave campaigns with the Worli contest being one between the scions of two political families in Mumbai—the Deoras and Thackerays—and the Mahim seat being one where MNS chief Raj Thackeray had fielded his own son, Amit Thackeray.
Mahim, which houses Shiv Sena Bhavan, the headquarters of the Shiv Sena (UBT) and which has been one of the strongest bastions of the undivided Shiv Sena, remained in Uddhav Thackeray’s grasp. Mahesh Sawant won the seat with a margin of 1,316 votes, with Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s Sada Sarvankar in second place and Raj Thackeray’s son, Amit Thackeray, from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in third place.
In Bandra East, another key contest in the city, Zeeshan Siddique, son of slain leader Baba Siddique, lost to SHiv Sena (UBT)’s Varun Sardesai by a margin of 11,365 votes. Sardesai, a debutant in electoral politics, is Aaditya Thackeray’s cousin.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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