Sena’s gamble to go alone failed, Saffron’s huge Victory

TIL Desk/National/Mumbai/ Making giant strides in the Shiv Sena citadel of Mumbai, BJP today won 82 seats in the fiercely fought BMC polls, just two seats behind the estranged saffron ally, but both were well short of the magic figure of 114 needed to control the civic body.

The hung verdict will reset the political calculations as no party is in the position to rule the country’s richest civic body on its own and alliance seems inevitable. However, it is not yet clear whether the saffron allies, who share power both in Maharashtra and at the Centre, will get back together or new combinations will emerge.

In the counting of votes held today, the Congress was relegated to the third position with 31 seats, whereas the NCP and the Raj Thackeray’s MNS were reduced to 9 and 7 seats, respectively. AIMIM, which had made its maiden entry into the Maharashtra Assembly with two seats in the last polls, won three seats on debut in the BMC elections, Samajwadi Party six, Akhil Bhartiya Sena one and Independents four. The Sena has controlled the BMC for the last two decades with the BJP remaining a junior partner. Sena’s gamble to go alone in its bastion appeared to have failed to pay off.