Congress is contesting on just 11 seats in the upcoming Assembly polls in Mumbai, a sharp decline from the 30 seats it contested in 2019 elections, marking the party’s lowest seat share in recent years.
Despite hectic negotiations with Shiv Sena (UBT), spearheaded by Mumbai Congress President MP Varsha Gaikwad and MLA Aslam Shaikh, Congress barely managed to secure double-digit seats for itself in MVA formula.
Many of the seats Congress is contesting in Mumbai are reportedly considered BJP bastions, where its chances of victory are slim.
Out of the 11 Mumbai seats secured by Congress, it holds sitting MLAs in four, while it swapped Bandra East for Chandivli with Shiv Sena (UBT).
The party also gave up its claim on seats like Byculla and Versova, which it was keen to contest.
“This is the Congress’s lowest seat tally in several decades. Fighting only 11 seats shows that it failed in the art of negotiation with Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP). Even NCP (SP) is contesting 3 seats, even though it has no sitting MLAs and didn’t even contest the Lok Sabha polls from Mumbai. Samajwadi Party is contesting 2 seats,” a political observer was quoted as saying by Times of India.
“The Mumbai Congress leadership failed to secure a fair deal for the party, and this will have a major impact on the party’s future course in Mumbai. Congress is contesting only 1 seat of Mulund in all of North East Mumbai for the first time,” the political observer added.
Even in Mulund, both NCP (SP) candidate Sangita Waze and Congress candidate Rakesh Shetty have submitted nominations.
Should the Congress candidate withdraw, the party would be left with no representation in North East Mumbai.
“We wanted to secure at least 14-15 seats. We took part in several rounds of negotiations, but in the end, we have only got 11 seats since Sena (UBT) announced candidates on their own. We wanted to contest from Byculla and Versova. But we will now follow alliance dharma and work to win the maximum number of seats for MVA,” Gaikwad was quoted as saying by ToI.
The 11 seats where Congress have fielded its candidates include Colaba (Hira Dewasi), Mumbadevi (Amin Patel), Dharavi (Jyoti Gaikwad), Chandivali (Naseem Khan), Malad (Aslam Sheikh), Bandra East (Asif Zakaria), Andheri West (Ashok Jadhav), Kandivali (Kalu Budhelia), Charkop (Yashwant Singh), Shiv-Koliwada (Ganesh Yadav), Mulund (Rakesh Shetty).
Further, only two of the 11 candidates the party has announced so far in Mumbai region are Marathi – Jyoti Gaikwad from Dharavi and Ashok Jadhav from Andheri West.
Congress workers reportedly fear that fielding only two Marathi candidates could hurt the party in the coming elections as the Marathi vote in Mumbai is around 40 per cent.