Resting poll hopes on NCP tie-up didn’t pay off: CM

“There’s nothing wrong with that logic,” said one Congress MP,”but there was nothing to back up that vote strategy at the ground level. How can secular votes stay consolidated if we have 30-odd rebel Congressmen in the fray,many of them serious candidates? Senior suburban Congress legislators also complained that there were too many NCP men standing as Independents against Congress candidates.”

This does not even take into account the sordid infighting within the Congress-NCP. For one,party workers made sure that kin of legislators given tickets didn’t have it easy. Three of these six eventually lost — former MLA Sada Sarvankar’s son Samadhan,sitting MLA Kalidas Kolambkar’s son Prathamesh and MLA Madhu Chavan’s son Samir.

Senior leaders had admitted even earlier that some of the rebels were deserving candidates. Samir Chavan lost to don-turned-politician Arun Gawli’s daughter Vandana,where over 5,200 votes were polled by former Congressman Rohidas Lokhande,who contested as an Independent.

Chavan denied that the infighting had caused the defeat,though he admitted that they had also been wrong on performance of the MNS. “We had expected their vote share to rise significantly,though not the number of seats. That didn’t happen,” he said.

A Congress MP attributed the rebellions to the large number of seats that went to the NCP kitty. “We should never have compromised on the 170 seats due to us,” said the NCP. These 170 included 71 seats the Congress had won in 2007 and 99 seats in which it had finished second. Over a dozen of those 99 had gone to the NCP. “The NCP lost all of these,” the MP pointed out.

Another legislator said traditional Congress voters had been left confused with senior leaders of the alliance attacking one another on television from Pune and Solapur,where the two parties fought against each other. “If Sharad Pawar questions the CM’s credibility as an appointed leader,who’s not directly elected,how can common voters take the alliance seriously?” he asked.

Chavan also has a lot of explaining to do over his proclaimation that the Shiv Sena would be rendered “inconsequential” after this election. “Look at voter mobilisation in Sena strongholds and compare it with the turnout in the slums and Muslim areas,” the legislator said. “The Marathi manoos,who feels a strong emotional bond with Balasaheb,took it upon himself to prove the CM wrong and went out and voted,” he added.

Anti-incumbency too worked against the Congress in some wards,though in those controlled by the Sena,it couldn’t cash in. Dharavi’s six corporator wards were all controlled by the Congress in 2002,and five of them retained in 2007 by it. Sill,despite repeated warnings form local Congress leaders,the state government postponed any clear decision on the long-pending Dharavi Redevelopment Project until the last minute.

Even Congress detractors were shocked when Friday’s results left the party a single corporator in Dharavi. The Shiv Sena took two,the RPI one (Mumbai’s sole RPI candidate to win,gangster D K Rao’s brother Mallesh Sabareddy),an Independent one and the Samajwadi Party one.