Congress, NCP make civic bypoll gains

Mumbai: Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Saturday made gains in the byelections in the state’s three-tier local bodies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena, however, kept intact their bastions in Mumbai and Nagpur.

The significance of the results has been the return of the Congress and the NCP to their old strongholds like Pune and Vidarbha. The byelections were in seven seats in municipal corporations, 12 in panchayat samitis and three in zilla parishads.  A seat in Jalgaon municipal council, a BJP candidate was elected unopposed. The NCP and the Congress won two each; the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Shiv Sena bagged one seat each. Of the 12 panchayat samiti seats that went to polls, the BJP, Congress and the NCP won three each, while Sena and Narayan Rane's Maharashtra Swabhiman Party won one each.

Byelections were held in two zilla parishad seats. An independent candidate won unopposed, while the Sena and the BJP won one seat each.

In Mumbai, the Sena kept its bastion of Sion where the party's Ramdas Kambale won by 745 votes over a Congress candidate. Here BJP and the Sena were in alliance while the Congress allied with the NCP.

Interestingly in Pune, the NCP won the seat with a lead of 3,521 votes. The party got 8,991 against Sena's 5,417 and the BJP came a distant third with 4,334 votes.