bastions like the Latur Zilla Parishad and Solapur municipal corporation, the home turf of late Vilasrao Deshmukh and party veteran Sushil Kumar Shinde.
bastions like the Latur Zilla Parishad and Solapur municipal corporation, the home turf of late Vilasrao Deshmukh and party veteran Sushil Kumar Shinde.
Until 2014, the BJP presence in the city was limited. It used to contest about 65 seats in alliance with the Sena. This time round, according to observers, it began the ground work for the polls more than a year back.
The party entrusted responsibilities to all the 15 legislators and three MPs to strengthen the organisation at the grassroot.
Over the year, the party highlighted alleged corruption in the civic body in road contracts, which was followed by probe, and nexus between officials and contractors was revealed.
The Congress got completely marginalised after the BJP took over the opposition space in the civic body.
Fadnavis's stress on ushering in transparency and changing the way tenders are floated and awarding of work contracts, which struck a chord with voters, the civic body observers said.
During the campaign, Fadnavis also spoke of how he expedited infrastructure projects like Metro, airport, coastal roads and bridges.
The BJP also vigorously wooed the non-Marathi voters, who constitute about 46 per cent of the total electorate of the sprawling city which has people from across the country as residents, observers said.
Congress leader from Nagpur, Nitin Raut blamed the party's debacle for lack of internal democracy.
"Dictatorial attitude of certain leaders who are not interested in ensuring the party win was responsible," he said, adding the biggest threat for the Congress in the state is neither the BJP nor the Sena but few leaders within the party itself.
In a dig at the MPCC president Ashok Chavan, he said someone who had the experience of running the state failed to lead the party to success.
"Instead of learning lessons from the 2014 assembly defeat, congress entrusted the task of running the party to those who were responsible for the defeat and encouraging factional fued," he added.
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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