Shinde confident of winning all 13 seats in the 5th phase

Mumbai: After he cast his vote on Monday morning, Mah chief minister  Eknath Shinde said that people are eager to make Narendra Modi Prime Minister again so they are coming out in huge numbers to vote. He claimed that Mahayuti (alliance led by the BJP) will win all the seats in this 5th phase.

“I am delighted to see the election atmosphere. People have come out despite the scorching heat. They want to see Modi again as the PM. I am confident that Mahayuti is winning all 13 seats in Maharashtra for which polling was held in the fifth phase,” Shinde said after voting along with his family members at a booth in Thane, which is his political turf.

Maharashtra CM’s son Shrikant is contesting the election from the Kalyan Lok Sabha constituency. It is considered to be one of the clear seats in the state as Shrikant Shinde has won the seat twice — 2014 and 2019 — with comfortable margins. This time, Shiv Sena (UBT) has fielded a relatively lightweight candidate in Vaishali Darekar-Rane.

Talking about the prospects of his son, Shinde said, “He has implemented immense development work in his constituency and the people have witnessed it. They will elect him for the third consecutive term with an unprecedented winning margin.”

The Maharashtra CM said not just Kalyan, but all 10 seats in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) will be won by Mahayuti as it is the stronghold of the Shiv Sena-BJP. He further said that Uddhav Thackeray will be completely defeated in the Lok Sabha election and the National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP will win more than 400 seats in the country.

“The Shiv Sena (UBT) would be wiped out following the Lok Sabha results on June 4. Uddhav Thackeray has betrayed the mandate of the people of Maharashtra not once, but twice, to become the CM. He has compromised the ideology of Balasaheb Thackeray and Anand Dighe and allied with traitors to grab power. The masses will teach him an appropriate lesson in the elections,” Shinde said.

The elections in Mumbai and Thane saw several prominent citizens exercising their franchise .

Union minister Piyush Goyal, industrialists Ratan Tata and Anil Ambani, cricketers Sachin Tendulkar, Ajinkya Rahane and Suryakumar Yadav voted in the morning. Tata Sons Chairman N. Chandrasekaran, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das, former Uttar Pradesh governor Ram Naik, Marathi theatre actor Prashant Damle, film personalities Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Anupam Kher, Anil Kapoor, Ashok Saraf, Konkona Sen Sharma, Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, Suniel Shetty, Janhvi Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar, Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar, veteran lyricist Gulzar also exercised their right to vote in Mumbai.