The Shiv Sena-BJP-RPI combine on Friday emerged the clear winners in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation election, the country’s richest civic body with an annual budget of Rs 22,000 crores, proving ineffective the newly-formed civic alliance of the Congress and the NCP.
However, it was the performance of the BJP and not the Sena that was decisive. The alliance had to tackle anti-incumbency, the new Congress-NCP alliance and increasing MNS influence.
The ruling Congress and NCP continue to dominate rural Maharashtra, but none of the major parties was able to win a simple majority in any of the big cities except for Pimpri-Chinchwad, where the NCP won 84 out of 128 seats. However, in he remaining nine municipal corporations, including Mumbai, Thane and Nashik, no major party or alliance got absolute majority. In Thane, the Sena-BJP-RPI alliance won 62 seats in the 132-member House and will come in to power with the help of Independents. The alliance was also close to the majority mark in Nagpur where it won 68 out of 145 seats. In Pune, the NCP emerged as the single largest party with 51 seats in the 152-member House and the Congress won 28 seats. The Sena-BJP alliance won 41 seats in Pune while the MNS got 29 seats. Nashik gave a fractured mandate with the MNS emerging as the surprising single largest party. In the 122-member House, the MNS won 40 seats, Congress won 15, NCP won 20, Sena won 19 and BJP won 14 seats.