Mumbai : Twenty eight of the 36 candidates fielded by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in Mumbai have not even made it to the top three.
The real shocker came in the form of Shalini Thackeray, party supremo Raj Thackeray’s sister-in-law, who lost from the Dindoshi constituency by a good 41,915 votes. Even ex-Mayor Shubha Raul, who had defected to the MNS from the Shiv Sena and was contesting from Dahisar, could not make the cut and came 4th.
Besides, the party’s candidate from Versova, Manish Dhuri, lost to BJP’s Bharti Lavhekar by a margin of 34,620 votes. Dhuri had come into the limelight for leading protests against participation of Pakistani celebrities in a popular TV reality show.
Byculla candidate Sanjay Naik came 5th with 19,672 votes. He lost to first-timer Waris Pathan of the MIM by a difference of 5,552 votes. Colaba’s Arvind Gawde also lost to BJP’s Raj Purohit by a good 47,155 votes and came 5th. Mumbadevi’s Imtiaz Anees, the party’s only Muslim candidate in the island city came 4th with 3,601 votes. Anand Prabhu from Wadala, Vijay Kurtdakar from Worli and Arvind Shirodkar from Malabar Hill also came 4th in their constituencies.
Akhilesh Chaubey, party’s only North Indian candidate who was contesting from Kandivali, came a distant 4th. Even Tushar Aphale, who was the campaign chief for MNS’s Bandra division, came 4th by a difference of 71,000 votes.
The only relief were party’s outgoing MLAs Nitin Sardesai, Mangesh Sangle and Bala Nandgaokar, who all lost to Shiv Sena candidates but managed to garner the second-highest votes in their constituency. The other MNS candidates who made it to the top 3 in the city are Nayan Kadam, Pravin Darekar, Shishir Shinde, Ishwar Tayade and Dilip Lande.
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Pravin Darekar resigns
Mumbai: The beleaguered MNS, routed in the assembly elections, faced another crisis Wednesday when its general secretary Pravin Darekar suddenly quit, party sources said. Darekar met party president Raj Thackeray and handed over his resignation. Thackeray’s decision on Darekar’s resignation letter was not yet known. Darekar was an MNS legislator who lost from Magathane constituency in northwest Mumbai to Shiv Sena’s Prakash Surve.
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