BJP students' wing seeks to distance party from 10-0 drubbing by Sena, even as Aaditya Thackeray links win to assembly prospects
Aaditya Thackeray celebrating with Yuva Sena senate members
On a high over sweeping the university senate elections, Yuva Sena president Aaditya Thackeray is looking at the win as a harbinger of hope for the Sena in the Assembly polls. He said the Sena will win more than twice the existing seats next year. "We are sending out reports to people of the good work that we have been doing. The senate victory will be repeated in the Assembly polls," he vowed.
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The results of the Mumbai University Graduate Constituency elections for formation of senate has established Aaditya among the top seniors in the Sena who have recently been accorded the title of 'leader'. The win is seen as a celebration of his official elevation within the party. He said he hadn't slept properly for the past three days in anticipation of his panel's brilliant performance.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Aaditya Thackeray celebrating with the Yuva Sena senate members. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
The winners are Mahadeo Jagtap, Pradeep Sawant, Pravin Patkar, Supriya Karande and Milind Satam from the open category, while Sheetal Sheth won in the women's category. Nikhil Jadhav, Dhanraj Kohchade, Shashikant Zore and Ranjan Kolambekar won from the reserved category. There were a total of 62,000 registered voters and 68 candidates associated with different political parties as well as independents.
Thackeray said the senate triumph was historic because Yuva Sena had won all 10 seats against the eight it had won the last time. "Students have faith in the Sena and this victory is the result of the good work of our team, the Yuva Sena and the Shiv Sena," he said while addressing media persons at Sena Bhavan.
"Voters came out for polling in the scorching heat. I thank them," he said. He said the Yuva Sena has fought on the ground to resolve issues. However, the results were a major setback for the ABVP - the youth wing of the ruling party - which had a chance to find representation on the senate after almost a decade. Aniket Ovhal, from ABVP, while congratulating Yuva Sena for the win, said, "We were hoping for two seats but our primary analysis shows that we lost a lot of votes to invalid voting.
It has to be noted that for ABVP it was completely a students' fight, there was no political intervention from the BJP. For Yuva Sena, Shiv Sena workers were present at all centres and at other activities, too. Nevertheless, we have had sweeping wins in SNDT and Nagpur universities and victory in several other universities such as Savitribai Phule Pune University, Solapur University, etc."
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