Mumbai :
Belying speculations that demonetisation and caste-based polarisation due to agitations by various communities for reservation including the Marathas will hit BJP, the ruling party today bagged 100 seats in the last phase of municipal council polls in Maharashtra.
It also secured seven posts of municipal council president in the fourth and final phase.
It took BJP’s overall tally at the end of final phase to 1190 councillors and 71 municipal council presidents, putting it at the top of the chart.
Polling for last phase took place on Sunday across 11 local bodies in Nagpur and Gondia districts: Kamthi, Umred, Katol, Kalameshwar, Mohpa, Ramtek, Narkhed, Khapa and Saoner in Nagpur district, and Tirora and Gondia in Gondia district.
Congress bagged 58 seats and won two council president posts in this phase. The party finished second overall, with total of 952 seats and 34 council presidents.
NCP won 26 councillor seats and finished with 812 seats in total. The party also won 22 council president posts. It did not win any president’s post in the fourth phase.
Shiv Sena, which won 598 seats in three phases, won another 14 seats in the fourth phase finishing with 612 councillors. The party won 26 council president posts. It did not win a single council president seat in the last phase.
MIM won a seat in Kamptee, while 18 seats in Katol were secured by ‘Vidarbha Maza’ party and four by PWP. In Saoner, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha won three seats.
BJP won president’s posts in Khapa, Saoner, Gondia and Tirora, Umred, Kalameshwar and Ramtek in fourth phase. Congress won the president’s seat in Kamptee and Mohapa. Vidarbha Maza won Katol council president’s seat. Narkhed council president’s seat went to Peoples Republican Party Nagar Vikas Aghadi.
The elections to 212 municipal councils and 18 nagar panchayats across Maharashtra was a major test for the over two-year-old Devendra Fadnavis-led state government.
In 2011 elections, NCP had won 1,300 seats while Congress had won 1,293. BJP had won 437, Shiv Sena 454 and MNS 61.
BJP, which has emerged as the net winner this time, is seen to have made inroads in semi-urban and rural areas of the state.
