Mumbai: The Shiv Sena and BJP have got a clear mandate in the Assembly elections but their ove-rall number of seats have decreased due to disgruntled leaders who turned rebel. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, no less, has accepted that the alliance suffered a jolt from its own rebels.
Independent candidate Mahesh Baldi, formerly with the BJP, won from the Uran constituency in Raigad district. Mr Baldi got 71,535 votes and defeated the Sena’s Manohar Bhoir by a margin of 7,101 votes. Mr Bhoir got 64,434 votes. Uran was considered a bastion of the Workers and Peasants Party but was won by a BJP candidate in the 2014 Asse-mbly polls.
Geeta Jain, who did not get a BJP ticket from Mira-Bhayandar, rebelled and contested independently and won by approximately 16,000 votes.
She defeated BJP candidate Narendra Mehta, who supposedly got the ticket because of his good contacts with senior saffron party leaders. However, many party workers were disappointed with the way he got a ticket.
On the other hand, rebels like the controversial Anil Gote (Dhule city) and Rajul Patel and Trupti Sawant — both ex- Sena leaders — contested and lost but caused great damage to the saffron ally.
Mr Gote, who left the BJP and contested as an independent, lost the election to AIMIM candidate Shah Faruk Anwar. Mr Anwar cut down the votes garnered by Sena candidate Hilal Mali by around 35,000.
Mr Patel contested independently against BJP’s Bharti Lavekar from Versova and cost the BJP about 32,000 votes while Ms Saw-ant, former MLA of the Bandra east constituency, defeated the Sena candidate, mayor Vishwanath Mahad-eshwar, by 787 votes. The Congress candidate, however, won with 37,636 votes.
