Sena woman elected mayor amid drama

MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena has survived to fight another day.
The Sena, along with the BJP and other alliance partners, managed to get a Sainik elected the mayor of the country’s richest municipal corporation for the third successive time, staving off a concerted opposition effort to entice corporators away from its fold.
Long-time Sena loyalist and corporator from the Maharashtrian-dominated area of Parel, Shraddha Jadhav (45), was elected mayor of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation; she got 114 out of a total of 224 votes.
Her nearest rival, Congress-NCP nominee and staunch Narayan Rane supporter Presila Kadam, could manage 95 votes. The polling process went on for over six hours as each corporator voted by a show of hand and then stood up to announce the name of the candidate s/he was voting for.
The deputy mayor, too, is from the saffron alliance. Shailaja Girkar, a BJP corporator from Kandivli, secured 112 votes; her rival, the NCP’s Vidya Chavan, got 94 votes.
But the Shiv Sena had to take a lot of precautions to hold its flock together and ensure that its candidate sailed through.