NCP candidate says Congress did not campaign for him, which resulted in the Shiv Sena winning the Mahim by-election
NCP candidate says Congress did not campaign for him, which resulted in the Shiv Sena winning the Mahim by-election
ANGRY at losing the Municipal Corporation by-election from Mahim held last week, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) workers laid the blame for the loss squarely on the door of the Congress, their allies in the state government.
A delegation of NCP party leaders plan to meet Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to complain about the attitude of the Congress leaders and workers in the city.
"There are several reasons for our defeat and one of them is the low percentage of voting.
We hoped to take the voting percentage to 50 per cent, but that did not happen. We got 4,143 votes and we managed it on our own strength.
u00a0
If we had secured Congress votes, I would have won this election easily. The grassroot workers of the Congress did not support us," said Mudassar Lambe, the losing NCP candidate.
Shiv Sena candidate Milind Vaidya won the by-election by a margin of more than 3,000 votes, despite the fact that a large number of voters were Muslims, traditionally seen as being pro- Congress and NCP.
By-elections had been scheduled for Mahim and Bhandup. Mahim fell in Congress MP Eknath Gaikwad's constituency and Bhandup in NCP MP Sanjay Patil's. However, NCP had insisted on standing for the Mahim by-election.
According to analysts, the Congress played a smart hand by handing over the constituency to NCP, as a defeat would give them less bargaining power in the 2012 Municipal Corporation elections.
ADVERTISEMENT
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
