The election for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was widely regarded as an acid test for three Maharashtra leaders. Prithviraj Chavan needed a win to strengthen his weak hand in local politics, Uddhav Thackeray had to prove that he could hold on to power in the country’s financial capital, and Raj Thackeray had to consolidate the gains in popular support he has made since the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.
The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine can only blame itself for failing to capture power in Mumbai and some other key cities in Maharashtra such as Thane, Nagpur and Nashik.
It was advantage Congress-NCP when the campaign for Mumbai’s municipal corporation started, as both parties were fighting together for the first time in local elections, and it was expected that the coalition would help avoid a division of the so-called secular votes. What could also have worked in its favour is the fact that the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party combine was at the risk of losing voter support after being in power for 17 years, a period when it has done little to address key infrastructure issues in Mumbai such as garbage disposal, water supply and roads. The Shiv Sena was also facing a major threat from Raj Thackeray’s breakaway Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), as both parties share the same vote bank.
Unlike his predecessors, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had personally got involved in seat-sharing talks with the NCP as well as the selection of Congress candidates, but he was not able to control factionalism within the Mumbai Congress. It was Mumbai Regional Congress Committee president Kripa Shankar Singh versus the rest. None of parties six Congress MPs from city, especially leaders such as Gurudas Kamat and Priya Dutt, who have mass support in the city, were happy with ticket distribution and thus kept their distance from the campaigning.
To limit the anti-incumbency factor, Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray made a smart move by fielding as many as 96 new faces in the135 seats which his party was contesting. Another bold move which helped the Shiv Sena was to give women candidates tickets even for open seats. The Shiv Sena had women candidates in 60% of the seats it contested, as against the mandatory 50%.
The rise of the MNS was another key takeaway from this election. The party increased its tally by four times, with its tally going up from seven in 2007 to 30 in 2012 (going by the data on election results and leads available at 3pm on Friday). And it seems the MNS has expanded its reach beyond its core Marathi base. It seems to have managed to get support from the large number of South Indian and Gujarati voters, who are relatively older migrants to Mumbai and also wary of the newer immigrants from the North Indian states.