The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Solapur Municipal Corporation is a major blow to Congress and its senior leader Sushil Kumar Shinde.
[File] Sushil Kumar Shinde | PTI
The BJP is comfortably ahead in 47 of 102 municipal seats in Solapur corporation. Congress, which ruled the body, has been thrown to third position with a mere 11 seats. The second slot has been pocketed by Shiv Sena with 18 seats. The BJP needs 52 seats to win simple majority and it is just five seats away from the number even as trends for 15 seats are yet to become clear.
Former Maharashtra chief minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had nurtured Solapur as his home turf. His defeat in 2014 Lok Sabha elections was a rude shock to the Congress. In the following assembly polls, his daughter Praniti managed to retain her seat despite a tough challenge from the BJP and the MIM.
The results of the municipal corporation elections are clearly a wake up call for the Congress as it appears to have lost out despite an equitable distribution of seats among all communities. BJP on the other hand had concentrated more on Lingayat community and had given 25 tickets within that community.
BJP, to its credit, also managed to bury differences within two of its senior leaders from the district—senior legislator Vijay Deshmukh and cabinet minster Subhash Deshmukh—to make sure that factions belonging to them worked very well for the party.
