Amid infighting, Modi wave, Cong weakens, NCP wiped out

The NCP never had a significant presence in Mumbai to count, but the Congress which was once in fine feather here, has been steadily losing its prominence. The party, which won 15 of the 34 Assembly seats in 2004, could retain only 17 seats in 2009.

However, from there on, the party ‘s imprint on Mumbai politics started to fade. At the corporation level, the Congress’s numbers slid from 71 wards in 2007 to 50 in 2012. At the Lok Sabha level, the Congress failed to clinch even a single of the five seats it had won in 2009, reducing its tally of parliamentary seats to nil. At the state level, after Sunday’s result the Congress now has only four MLAs in the city – Dharavi, Chandivali, Malad West, Mumbadevi and Wadala.

“There is a lot of factionalism in Mumbai Congress and it is posing a lot of problems to aspiring candidates from the party in Mumbai. My wife had first won as an independent at the local level and then joined the Congress. I also contested from the Congress. Yet in 2012, she was denied a ticket to contest only because some senior leaders were trying to push their own candidates even though she had Congress leader Priya Dutt’s support,” said S Annamalai, former Congress corporator and chief of the Mumbai Congress’s South Indian cell.

Besides Annamalai, former Congress corporator Suresh Koparkar also contested as an independent from Bhandup against Congress candidate Shyam Sawant. Similarly, Afzal Dawoodani who was once vice president of the Youth Congress contested against Amin Patel from Mumbadevi. In Magathane, a Congress corporator who was denied a ticket reported indulged in negative campaigning for the official party candidate, asking people to not vote for the Congress.

There has also been an underlying discord within the top echelons of the party in Mumbai. Former MP Priya Dutt is said to have had a serious feud with Kripashankar Singh, who was ousted from the Kalina Assembly constituency on Sunday, and with Naseem Khan who won from Chandivali. During the 2012 civic election, there was open factionalism between the two camps over candidates’ nomination.

Dharmesh Vyas, former corporator and a Mumbai Congress functionary, said, “Infighting happens in all parties at some level or the other.”

NCP’s national spokesperson, Nawab Malik, too blamed the alliance with the Congress for its obliteration from Mumbai.
While it has a strong presence in the western Maharashtra region, the NCP has never had a connect with voters in Mumbai, which is evident from the results.

Now, of the three MLAs that NCP had in the city, Sachin Ahir from Worli and Milind Kamble from Kurla lost with a wide margin of 23,012 votes and 27,341 votes, respectively. Kamble finished fourth in Kurla after Shiv Sena, BJP and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen. Malik, on the other hand, lost Anushakti Nagar with a narrow margin of 1,007 votes.