Mumbai: The victory margin in 12 of the 36 assembly constituencies in the city was slimmer than 10,000 votes, showed data from the recently concluded election.
For incumbents like Aslam Shaikh, re-elected from Malad West, and Aaditya Thackeray, re-elected from Worli, the victory margin took a dive compared to the last election.
While Shaikh of the Congress won his fourth consecutive election, Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (UBT) scored a victory for the second time in a row.
Shaikh won against BJP nominee Vinod Shelar by 6,277 votes, down more than 4,000 votes from the 10,383 in 2019.
Thackeray won against Shiv Sena candidate Milind Deora by 8,801 votes, a plunge of over 58,000 votes compared to his victory margin of 67,427 in the last election.
Deora, in a post on social media platform X, said: “I took on UBT’s strongest team in #Worli—1 ex-CM, 1 ex-Cabinet Minister, 1 ex-Union Minister, 1 MP, 1 MLA, 2 MLCs & 3 ex-Mayors. Despite MNS splitting 19,367 of Mahayuti’s votes, we led at one point & cut @AUThackeray’s margin to 8,801 from 67,427 in 2019.”
Debutant Shiv Sena (UBT) candidates Haroon Khan and Anant Nar won against Bharati Lavekar of the BJP and Manisha Waikar of the Shiv Sena, respectively, by fewer than 2,000 votes.
Khan won by a margin of 1,541 votes against Lavekar and Nar managed a distance of 1,600 votes against Waikar, wife of Mumbai North West MP Ravindra Waikar.
Khan is the husband of Shahida Khan, a former corporator. She was nominated from the Versova seat after it got reserved for a woman candidate during the 2017 municipal election.
In Dadar-Mahim, where it was a three-way fight between MNS chief Raj Thackeray’s son Amit Thackeray, debutant Shiv Sena (UBT) nominee Mahesh Sawant and Sada Sarvankar of the Shiv Sena, Sawant won by 1,316 votes.
All except one of the 12 on the list who were re-elected with fewer than 10,000 votes were Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, NCP and Shiv Sena candidates.
Among the BJP nominees across the seats in the city, only Tamil Selvan from Sion Koliwada won by 7,895 votes against Congress nominee Ganesh Yadav.