Sena-BJP win Mumbai, MNS shines

India's richest civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), would be ruled by the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance once again, as the combine defeated both the Congress-NCP alliance and the growing strength of MNS, led by a Sena family renegade Raj Thackeray who however grabbed a major share of votes across Maharashtra.

In Mumbai, of the 227 wards Sena has won 75 while the BJP got 32. Republican Party of India (RPI) was also in alliance with the Sena and BJP.

"This is people´s victory," said Shiv Sena Executive President Uddhav Thackeray.

Congress chief minister of Maharashtra Prithviraj Chavan said the "result is surprising and unexpected."

The Congress won 50 seats while it ally NCP (Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar) got only 14 seats.

The Shiv Sena had grabbed 84 seats in 2007 while the BJP tally then was 28.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) of Raj Thackeray, however, put up an impressive show.

The MNS won 27 seats in Mumbai, compared to just seven in 2007. It also fared well in Pune and Nashik.

In Nashik, MNS is the single largest party and would be the kingmaker with 40 seats in the 122-member house. It is followed by NCP with 20, Congress with 15, Shiv Sena 19 and BJP 13.

The Shiv Sena-BJP combine has made equally impressive result in Thane where the alliance defeated the Congress-NCP combine bagging 61 of the total 130 seats.

The NCP won the highest number of seats in Pune but it suffered a jolt in the city with the city´s mayor Mohansingh Rajpal, a contestant, losing the election to BJP candidate Ganesh Bidkar (BJP).

In Pune NCP and Congress fought separately. Together they got 78 seats (NCP 50 and Congress 28) out of 148 declared in the 152-member civic body. MNS had won 23 seats in Pune till last report.

Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur and Amravati were consolidated by the NCP-Congress combine.

In Nagpur Sena-BJP is the largest winner but failed to gain simple majority. It is a hung civic body now.

It is a hung house in Akola also though Sena-BJP-RPI got 26 as against 23 by Congress-NCP in the 73-member house.

In Ulhasnagar, the SS-BJP-RPI combine garnered 30 seats against 28 by Congress-NCP alliance in the 78-member civic body.

Voting for the civic elections in Mumbai and nine other municipalities of Maharashtra was held on Thursday evening with Mumbai recording poor voter turnout.

All eyes were on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation where a heavy contest was witnessed between the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP combine and their tough challenger Congress-NCP.

The Sena-BJP combine was dominating the Mumbai municipality for the past 16 years.

Besides Mumbai, the polling took place in Thane, Ulhasnagar, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Nashik, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur.

A total of 1,244 candidates were in the fray in the ten municipalities.