Mumbai The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have withdrawn its candidate from the Andheri East by-elections, but for the Shiv Sena, the war is not over yet. Using this election as an opportunity to display its strength, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) is working on ensuring a good turnout of voters and a margin of over one lakh votes to show that it still has popular support.
BJP candidate Murji Patel’s withdrawal from the fray has acted as a sort of anti-climax for the Shiv Sena, which had prepared to take on the BJP and chief minister Eknath Shinde’s Sena faction in the first election after the vertical split in the Sena. The Shiv Sena (UBT) was hoping that a sympathy vote for the party and its nominee Rutuja Latke, whose husband and Sena MLA Ramesh Latke’s demise in May has necessitated the by-election, would see it through in a contest which was seen as the semi-final for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections due later this year or early-2023.
With the elections now just a formality, the Sena is now using it as an opportunity to harness its cadre to ensure a good turnout and a victory margin of over one lakh votes, said a senior Shiv Sena leader. There are six other candidates belonging to smaller parties or independents, who are still in the fray for the Andheri East Assembly seat.
“We are now working towards ensuring a record margin of over one lakh votes. The voting percentage may be lower at around 40 per cent because only the Shiv Sena will try and get people to vote. But even then, we will work on ensuring a good turnout for our nominee and translate this into a good victory margin,” the Sena leader added.
The constituency has around 2.77 lakh voters, of which around 1.03 lakh are Maharashtrians. “Now, the only question is that of the victory margin. We will try and get the highest margin,” claimed Sandeep Naik, former corporator and shakha pramukh. In the 2019 assembly elections, former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar (NCP) had the highest victory margin in the state with a margin of 1,65,265 votes against Gopichand Padalkar of the BJP from Baramati.
A former Shiv Sena corporator from the constituency said that they were continuing with canvassing and smaller meetings. The party expects the core voters of the Shiv Sena and also those of the Congress and the NCP to turn out on election day.
In case of a fight with the BJP, the Shiv Sena also expected the outcome of the elections to reveal if the Congress and NCP, which are the other parties in the MVA, could “transfer” their votes to the Shiv Sena (UBT), and pave the way for their grand alliance against the BJP in the BMC polls.