In the election of chairpersons for the standing and education committees in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), Shiv Sena defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to retain the post on Monday.
A corporator member from each party had been nominated for the post and each member of the committee would vote to elect their preferred candidate as the chairperson. Earlier on Friday, the Sena, BJP, and Congress had filed their nominations for contesting the elections, however at the last minute on Monday, the Congress candidates had withdrawn their nomination.
Sena had filed corporators - Yashwant Jadhav and Sandhya Doshi for the post, while BJP had fielded Rajashree Shirodkar and Pankaj Yadav. Congress candidates Asif Zakaria and Asha Koparkar had withdrawn their nominations just before the voting began on Monday.
During the voting, Congress members maintained a neutral stand while corporator members of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) - openly voted the Sena.
Meanwhile, leaders of the BJP had expressed their discontent on Congress and NCP for indirectly supporting the Sena.
"Congress brags about being the opposition party in BMC, while here we see them support the Sena indirectly instead of putting a check on their corrupted malpractices," Vinod Mishra - group leader of BJP in the BMC, told FPJ.
"People can clearly understand that Sena is now trying to get Congress and NCP's support for forging another alliance at the BMC," Mishra added.
Meanwhile, Ravi Raja - senior Congress corporator and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the house said that their candidate has withdrawn as they didn't have the numbers.
"We had filed our nomination as we are the opposition and as we don't have the numbers, then there's no point in contesting it, therefore we had maintained a neutral stand during the elections," Raja told FPJ.
"The BJP is saying so many things wherein during the voting one member of theirs was absent and another member didn't have any voting rights," said Raja.
Senior Sena corporator- Yashwant Jadhav, who was elected for the fourth time as standing committee chairman said that all the other parties know that Sena's stand is for development which is why they have chosen to support them voluntarily.
