Mumbai (The Hindu): Shiv Sena nominee Samruddhi Kathe’s win in the last ward committee election on March 25 formally marked the complete exit of the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) from all major BMC ward committees. The Congress’s 31 corporators and the NCP’s nine were no match for the united front put up by the ruling Shiv Sena and the BJP.

The Sena and BJP appeared to have sorted out differences for the internal committee elections. Of the 17 ward committees, BJP nominees have bagged eight chairperson posts, while Sena cornered seven. Incidentally, though the Congress and NCP did not win smaller outfits like ABS (one seat) and MNS (7) managed to bag chairperson posts thanks to some smart politicking by their leaderships.

The chunk of the heads of key committees including Standing, Improvements, Education and Health has already been taken by the Sena. Almost all major committee elections were won unopposed, with the Congress-NCP not even in a position to put up candidates. A contest was seen in only one ward committee for A,B and E wards, which was won by BJP-supported ABS corporator Geeta Gawli.

Leader of the Congress in the BMC Ravi Raja said, “The strength of the Congress has reduced drastically from 52 to 31 seats. We did try to form an alliance with the NCP, but we couldn’t muster the numbers. How do you put up a fight when the they (Sena-BJP) have 20 of the total 26 seats in the Standing Committee? Our numbers were so small and and spread out that it was impossible to put up a fight. For winning one seat, you need to have at least four to six corporators in each ward.”

Mr. Raja added that this setback won’t stop them from playing the role of an effective opposition in the BMC. “Looks like the BJP is playing games with us by neither taking up the Leader of Opposition’s post nor letting go of it.”

Though the BJP chose to stay away from all major committees as part of its arrangement with the Sena, it chose to have a go at the individual ward committee level. The saving grace for the Congress is that its strength allowed it to nominate one corporator, social activist Sunil Narsale, from their quota. A formal announcement is likely to be made on Monday.