Sena, BJP get the city, and get even too

For the Shiv Sena, bouncing back from its poor 2009 performance and regaining its home turf had become imperative.

However, with Mumbai now more cosmopolitan and many Marathi-speaking voters, especially the youth, looking for more developmental promises, the results indicate that Sena’s campaign primarily on the “Marathi factor” can only get the party thus far.

Twenty-four-year-old Karishma Muravne, a Goregaon resident who voted for the BJP said, “With Narendra Modi as its face, the BJP seems more development-oriented than anything else, which is why I voted for the party. As far as Sena is concerned, their Marathi-centric campaign has created a very wrong impression of us. Maharashtrians are hardly the staunch, aggressive community that they project. In fact, its one of the most peace-loving communities. Sena needs to tone down its approach and speak more about the way forward.”

Shiv Sena’s Anant Geete, a minister in the BJP-led Union government, said he would not like to analyse the results till a decision was taken on the formation of the government. However, he conceded that the party could do more to expand its voter base in Mumbai.

“The results show Marathi voters in Mumbai were with the Shiv Sena. However, they are only a certain percentage of the total electoral base. To reach out to other voters, we will give more stress on development,” Geete said.

The Sena won in nearly all constituencies traditionally dominated by the Marathi-speaking population, such as Mahim, Sewri, Worli, Magathane, Bhandup and Vikhroli. But in several other places, the party lost to the BJP by a huge margin, especially in the suburbs that are more cosmopolitan in demographics. The Sena even failed to retain two of its constituencies that it had won in 2009 in the suburbs – Goregaon and Dahisar – losing both to the BJP.

In the 15 constituencies that BJP won, Sena was able to give the party a tough contest in just two. These are Sion Koliwada where Shiv Sena’s Mangesh Satamkar lost to BJP’s Selvan Tamil by a margin of 3,378 votes, and Goregaon, Shiv Sena’s stronghold for 10 years, where senior leader Subhash Desai lost to BJP’s Vidya Thakur by 4,756 votes.

Besides the six constituencies dominated by Marathi-speaking voters, Sena also won in Anushakti Nagar, Bandra East, Jogeshwari, Andheri East, Dindoshi, Kalina, Kurla, and Chembur.

Congress, which had 17 Assembly seats, slid to number three in the city with five MLAs while the NCP and the Raj Thackeray-led MNS were wiped out from the country’s financial capital. Of the two other seats, Samajwadi Party retained one, Mankhurd-Shivajinagar, while the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen wrested the other, Byculla, from the Congress.