Thane: The clout of Shiv Senain the lake city seems to be on the rise as the party has registered a notable increase in its vote-sharing ratio over the last three civic elections.
As the party had managed to retain 25% of the overall vote tally in the 2007 TMC elections, the ratio rose to over 29% in the polls in 2012. The vote percentage escalated to almost 35% this time, revealing the party’s dominance over the power corridors of the civic body.
The party garnered around 10 lakh of the total 28.85 lakh votes cast by the 7.26 lakh voters, reveals an initial online data of the seats cornered by each of the five major parties in Thane. Final tally of votes polled by the parties was yet to be made available at the time of going to the press. The same would be available soon, said officials.
In comparison, BJP managed to improve its tally from a modest 5% in the last polls to an impressive 25% in the present elections, with a vote count of 7.15 lakh. The NCP, which has the second highest count of seats in the 2017 TMC polls, garnered just 16% or around 4.62 lakh votes from across the limited seats where it contested this time.
“We are working towards increasing the tally with each passing election. The vote tally in my constituency was higher in the civic polls compared to the assembly polls. We fielded more candidates and at many spots lost by a close margin. So, even if we have less seats, the vote tally has increased considerably,” said BJP MLA and senior leader, Sanjay Kelkar. Experts said with a high count of votes, especially from dense areas of the old city and GB road, the count for the BJP is high even though it slinks to the third position when it comes to the number of seats. Also, the party contested in the maximum number of seats compared to NCP that fielded candidates in select segments only in coordination with its ally, Congress.
Observers said it was time rival camps took up this vote share shift seriously as it could impact their performance during the forthcoming assembly polls.
In contrast, Congress was decimated with a mere 4.82% or 1.39 lakh votes earned by the party in the elections this time, which is a massive drop as compared to the last few elections.
Meanwhile, MNS, which faced an embarrassing rout, could get just 5.46% votes, which is less than its 15% tally in the 2012 polls