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Mumbai: In a major city like Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, the Congress party is facing difficulties finding candidates for the BMC elections. This has exposed the weakness of the Congress organization in the city. There are a total of 227 seats in the BMC, but so far only 197 candidates have expressed their willingness to contest the elections. The Mumbai Congress is trying to find candidates for the remaining 30 seats. However, the Mumbai Congress claims that the allegations of not finding candidates are false.
Which seats are lacking candidates?
The assembly constituencies where candidates are not available include Bhandup, Ghatkopar East, Ghatkopar West, Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar, Vikhroli, Charkop, Andheri East, Jogeshwari, Chembur, Wadala, and some wards in Malabar Hill. According to Congress sources, these are all wards where the ruling BJP-Shinde Sena and Thackeray Sena are strong, and contesting here means certain defeat. The party’s organization is not strong in these wards, nor does it have a large support base.
How did the Congress reach this point?
The opposing faction of Varsha Gaikwad alleges that the organization has weakened throughout the city since she became the president of the Mumbai Congress. In the last 2.5 years, the Mumbai Congress has been limited only to Dharavi. Recently, in an internal meeting of the Mumbai Congress, a senior leader stated that in the current situation, they are only in a position to strongly contest 50 to 60 seats in the BMC. He said that in the last two and a half years, the Congress has neither launched any major movements nor focused on party branding.
Varsha Gaikwad.
Several senior Congress leaders are unhappy
The senior leader said that the party has not yet been able to create a strong narrative for the BMC elections. He said that due to weak planning, the party is nowhere to be seen in the election discussions compared to the BJP-Shinde Sena and the Thackeray brothers. It is clear that many senior leaders of the Mumbai Congress are unhappy with the way Varsha Gaikwad is running the party. The level of discontent was such that several senior leaders had stopped even coming to the party office until the elections were announced.
Alliance with VBA to avoid embarrassment?
According to sources, to avoid the embarrassment of not finding suitable candidates, the Mumbai Congress attempted to form an alliance with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), but the VBA did not give any importance to the Mumbai Congress. Meanwhile, sources say that a faction within the Mumbai Congress is in favor of an alliance with the Thackeray Sena. This faction believes that if the party had contested the elections in an alliance, it could have achieved a respectable position. Uddhav Thackeray had also offered to give around 60 seats to the Congress in an alliance, but this proposal was rejected on the grounds that doing so would destroy the Congress organization in Mumbai.
‘Allegations of not finding candidates are false’
Speaking on behalf of the Mumbai Congress, party spokesperson Sureshchandra Rajhans told India TV, “We deny the allegations that we are not finding candidates. We have received applications from 950 prospective candidates so far. All the prospective candidates have been interviewed. A screening committee meeting will be held on December 25, where the names of the candidates will be discussed. The names of the candidates will be finalized after the screening.”
