The Mahayuti alliancehas faced a big technical and political setback during its campaign for the Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections. The BJPand the Shiv Sena(Shinde faction) tried to keep their candidate names secret to avoid rebellion, but this strategy backfired. It has now come out that Mahayuti does not have a single official candidate in four key wards of Mumbai. Because of this, the alliance is believed to have already lost these four seats even before voting begins.
To stop rebels, the Mahayuti kept the list of candidates hidden until the last moment. But because of this delay, they failed to submit names in four wards. This means the alliance will now contest only 223 out of 227 seats, according to a report by Lokmat.
Four key wards in Mumbai currently have no official Mahayuti candidates in the fray. These include Ward 211 and Ward 212 in South Mumbai, Ward 145 in the Trombay-Chita Camp area, and Ward 167 in Kurla West.
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What is the reason behind fallout?
Usually, parties keep a ‘dummy’ candidate ready in case the main candidate’s application gets rejected. But this time, due to confusion over seat-sharing and strict secrecy, candidates were called late at night to the party office to collect their AB forms.
In this rush, the party did not file dummy applications. Because of this, and some technical issues, the official Mahayuti candidates could not enter the contest in these four wards, Lokmat reported citing sources.
How will the contest look now?
With no Mahayuti candidates in these wards, the fight has become a multi-cornered contest. In Ward 145, the battle is between NCP (Ajit Pawar), Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT), with Ajit Pawar’s faction breaking away to contest separately.
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Ward 167 will see Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Samajwadi Party face off. In Ward 211, the contest is between NCP (Ajit Pawar), Congress and the Samajwadi Party. Meanwhile, Ward 212 will witness a three-way fight involving Congress, the MNS and the All India Sena.
WardContestants145NCP (Ajit Pawar) vs Congress vs Shiv Sena (UBT) — Ajit Pawar’s faction from Mahayuti is contesting separately167Congress vs Shiv Sena (UBT) vs Samajwadi Party211NCP (Ajit Pawar) vs Congress vs Samajwadi Party212Congress vs MNS vs All India SenaAcross the state, Mahayuti candidates have been elected unopposed in several places. But in Mumbai, not having candidates in four seats is being seen as embarrassing. Now, to reach the majority mark of 114 seats in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, the alliance will have to work even harder on the remaining 223 seats. |
