SP, MNS help Shiv Sena retain Mumbai Mayor post

Signalling that new political winds were sweeping Maharashtra and could soon have India in their grip, the Shiv Sena candidate for the post of the Mayor of Mumbai, Shraddha Jadhav was today elected defeating Congress nominee Pricilla Kadam.

Jadhav accomplished this because Samajwadi Party and Mumbai Navnirman Samiti (MNS) corporators stayed away from the election. In the 228-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which Sena has been ruling for the past 15 years, Jadhav bagged 114 votes while her nearest rival Pricilla Kadam got 95 votes.

The absence of six MNS corporators and seven Samajwadi Party members ensured Shiv Sena got the prized post.

In March this year, the BMC presented a budget worth Rs 19,000 crore, bigger than the entire combined budget of several small states. There was an allocation of Rs 960.53 crore for road works alone.

Because of the financial power the BMC wields, if there ever was a tactical political alliance, this was it. In street-level political engagements, the Shiv Sena and the MNS are rivals. Even more alienated from the Shiv Sena is the Samajwadi Party, which sees support from the minorities as a crucial part of its appeal in Maharashtra, especially Mumbai.

But when voting for the mayoral poll began, seven Samajwadi Party coporators just stayed away while six MNS corporators were busy listening to a speech by party chief Raj Thackeray, estranged nephew of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, at a function in Sion.

“We skipped voting as supporting Congress would have sent a wrong signal to MNS supporters,” a leader of MNS which Raj formed after parting ways Shiv Sena, said.

In another realignment of forces, the nationalist Congress Party (NCP) candidate Mohansingh Rajpal was elected mayor of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). Rajpal defeated his Shiv Sena rival Deepak Gawde in the election, which also signalled an end of the controversial “Pune Pattern”.

The alliance, known as “the Pune Pattern”, had generated political heat during the last mayoral polls when the Congress took strong objection to NCP's truck with Sena-BJP. The architect of this alliance was NCP leader Ajit Pawar. Pawar’s siding with the BJP-Shiv Sena in Mayoral election, although the party had an alliance with the Congress, had created so much bad blood between the two allies that party leader Sharad Pawar had to intervene.

This pattern has now been broken. Rajpal polled 89 votes against 45 that went in favour of Gawde. Prasanna Jagtap of the Congress was elected deputy mayor as he defeated BJP nominee Vishnu Harihar by 45 votes.

Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena-BJP fronts in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) have a strength of 90 and 46, respectively in the 144 member new house. The eight-member MNS group did not cast their votes. The election formally marked reunion of the allies, NCP and Congress, in the civic body which had witnessed a post-poll alliance between NCP and Saffron brigade after the last elections that threw up a hung house.

Meanwhile, the third part of the triangle, MNS chief Raj Thackeray, who has sought to take the Maharashtra for Maharashtrians plank away from the Shiv Sena, today praised Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee for her announcement to conduct railway recruitment examinations in regional languages.