Maharashtra assembly polls: EC gave Eknath Shinde ‘real Sena’ tag, voters seal it too | Mumbai News
Chief minister Eknath Shinde on Saturday established himself, and rather convincingly, as the leader of the real Shiv Sena.
With his party winning 57 seats — one more than the undivided Shiv Sena’s 56 in the 2019 assembly elections and a staggering 35 more than Shiv Sena-UBT‘s Saturday tally – he now has the first claim to not only Sena founder Bal Thackeray’s political legacy, but also the grassroots support that was so far believed to be with Uddhav Thackeray.
Shinde Sena’s strike rate – number of seats contested divided by the number of wins – made its victory even more remarkable. His party contested only 81 seats this time and won 57 at a strike rate of 70.37%. In 2019, the undivided Sena had contested 124 seats and won 56 – that’s a strike rate of 45.16%. And in 1995, when the undivided Shiv Sena had won 73 seats, its highest ever, the strike rate was 43.19%.
Numbers apart, Shinde Sena now stands as the state’s number one regional party, second only to the national behemoth, the BJP, and miles ahead of the Sharad Pawar’s NCP.
Political observers said that with such a massive win under his belt, it looks like Shinde is only getting started. Having made deep inroads into Mumbai, Shiv Sena-UBT’s traditional stronghold, it is just a matter of time before he challenges Uddhav Thackeray for the control of the cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. That, said political observers, would be the final blow.
Shinde’s Sena contested 15 seats in Mumbai and won 5. Sena UBT contested 22 and won 10.
But even before that, there is a very real possibility of Shinde poaching Sena-UBT’s MLAs, MPs and local leaders, including influential ‘shakha pramukhs’ in Mumbai.
Almost all of Sena’s 40 sitting MLAs won and so did its cabinet ministers, illustrating the meticulous planning that went into selection of candidates and designing their campaigns. It also showed how he and his ministers used their administrative heft to woo voters.
In a hat-tip to his growing influence and capacity to get people elected, several of the last-minute imports from the BJP who were given Sena tickets — Murji Patel in Andheri East and Nilesh Rane in Kudal – won too. In both these seats, the defeated candidates were Sena-UBT’s sitting MLAs.
Shinde is now also being recognized as one of the main architects of the BJP-Sena-NCP Mahayuti’s massive win. His decision to launch the Ladki Bahin Scheme, along with the government’s other welfare programmes, just months before the elections seems to have benefited all Mahayuti partners.
Many believe the Ladki Bahin Scheme was the turnaround after the Mahayuti’s disappointing performance in the Lok Sabha elections where BJP’s tally had slipped drastically and Ajit Pawar’s NCP won just one of the four seats it contested.
Shiv Sena MP Shrikant Shinde characterised Shinde Sena’s victory as the end of Shiv Sena being run as a private limited company. “This is people’s victory. They have delivered their verdict on who is taking Balasaheb’s legacy forward,” he said.
As the trends became clear near noon on Saturday, the Shiv Sena Bhavan, Sena-UBT’s headquarters in Dadar wore a despondent look. Miles away, in suburban Thane, Anand Bhavan, the nerve center of Shinde Sena’s campaign, was reverberating with the noise of firecrackers and drums. It was almost like the power that went with being a Shiv Sainik had taken a fast local from Dadar to Thane.
