Loss making "combine" of poor understanding

The biggest blow dealt to the combine was the defeat of BJP stalwart from North East Mumbai, Pramod Mahajan, by more than 47,000 votes.

While Mahajan"s defeat was a clear pointer toDalit disenchantment with the saffron combine, the extremely narrow victory margin of the Sena’s South Central candidate Mohan Rawle — 153 votes — showed the substantially reduced mandate in his favour. Last time, he had won with a comfortable margin of 58,652 votes; this time, he somehow managed to scrape through. "It"s stunning. A margin of 150 votes is too thin, but everybody had predicted I would win comfortably," a slightly shaken but relieved Rawle said. A Sena MLA felt the straight fight between SP candidate Sohail Lokhandwala and Rawle made the contest a keenly fought one.

Ram Naik emerged "happy," but also "a little sorry." Most predictions had said he would romp home with a record margin of at least three lakh votes, but Ram Pandagale threw up a tough challenge and restricted Naik’s excess figure to just 75,000 votes.

Naik said the slum demolitions by the alliance government were mainly instrumental in reducing his victory margin, as he fared particularly badly in Malad and Kandivli, wheremajor demolitions were carried out last year.

Stressing on the need for a deep analytical probe of the Sena-BJP"s poor performance in the metropolis, Naik hoped the faults identified would be corrected before the Assembly elections scheduled two years from now.

Shiv Sena’s Madhukar Sarpotdar, who won from North West Mumbai, attributed the saffron combine"s debacle to the Ramabai Nagar incident and the Sonia factor. "Dalits and Muslims went with the Congress and Mulayam Singh Yadav respectively," he felt.

In North Central Mumbai too, touted to be a cakewalk for Sena’s sitting MP Narayan Athawalay, it was RPI"s Ramdas Athavale who came up trumps with a victory margin of 27,000 votes. This, despite the fact that the chief minister’s assembly segment, Dadar falls in the same constituency.

"People said I had a slim chance here, but I knew that of the 11.2 lakh voters here, at least seven lakh were anti-Sena. So even if the Dadar segment had not voted for me, there were other segments on my side," ajubilant Athavale said.