The BJP has delivered a knock out blow in Pune, even as the party appears to be heading towards winning a majority on its own in Pune Municipal Corporation. In the 162 member municipal body, BJP, so far, is comfortably ahead in 74 seats, leaving NCP far behind, and is just eight seats away from majority mark of 82.
This is a big blow for Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar. Pune city and district have always been seen as home turf of Pawars. The BJP delivered its first blow in the Assembly elections when it won all eight Assembly seats in Pune city in 2014 polls. Since then, NCP had been working hard to stop BJP's onslaught but the efforts seem to failed.
Interestingly, ward no 15 in Pune city where Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had to cancel his campaign rally for want of audience, not only saw highest turnout but has also tilted towards the saffron party. NCP and Congress had made fun of the chief minister when he had to cancel his rally in ward no 15 at the last minute as hardly anyone turned up to attend.
At the time of filing this report, BJP is comfortably placed at 74 seats, while NCP is at number two with 36 seats, followed by Congress, Shiv Sena, and MNS with 16, 10 and 6 seats respectively.
The credit of this performance goes to chief minister Fadnavis and two senior BJP leaders — minister Girish Bapat and party MP in Rajya Sabha Sanjay Kakde. The trio, brushing aside all the opposition, had distributed tickets purely on electoral merit, which meant that a number of party loyalists were sidelined in the process.
The Shiv Sena is set to emerge as the largest party in Mumbai, while the BJP is ahead in other cities across Maharashtra in civic polls as trends today showed the Congress and the NCP trailing far behind them.
The Sena is leading in 93 seats and the BJP in over 70 as trends of counting of votes for the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, where the saffron allies are locked in a battle, poured in.
The stakes are high for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, who led their parties from the front and were involved in a high decibel and no-holds-barred campaign.
Apart from Mumbai, the municipal corporations which went to the polls were Thane, Ulhasnagar, Nashik, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.
(With inputs from PTI)