In a silver lining for Shiv Sena (UBT), Aaditya Thackeray, son of party chief Uddhav Thackeray won south Mumbai’s Worli in a nail-biting Sena vs Sena battle in the Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024.
The young Thackeray defeated Milind Deora, a former Congress MP who jumped ship and joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in January, with a margin of 8,801 votes.
However, this is eight times less than the margin by which he has won in the 2019 Assembly elections. In the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly polls, Aaditya had made his electoral debut from the Worli constituency and emerged victorious with a massive margin of over 67,000 votes.
The constituency is part of the Mumbai (South) Lok Sabha constituency, which was a stronghold of the Deora family. Murli Deora had won the Mumbai (South) seat thrice between 1984 and 1991 and then again in 1998. Milind Deora, his son, was elected as Congress MP from the seat in 2004 and 2009.
The Shiv Sena started winning from there in 2014 and the sitting MP, Arvind Sawant, sided with the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena after the party’s split in 2022.
Milind Deora, in a post on X wrote, “I took on UBT’s strongest team in #Worli — 1 ex-CM, 1 ex-Cabinet Minister, 1 ex-Union Minister, 1 MP, 1 MLA, 2 MLCs & 3 ex-Mayors. Despite MNS splitting 19,367 of Mahayuti’s votes, we led at one point & cut @AUThackeray’s margin to 8,801 from 67,427 in 2019. ‘Climate Change Minister’ asking for ballot papers is truly ironic!”
After his candidature was announced, Aaditya Thackeray had claimed that people were aware that the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena had ‘looted’ Maharashtra and pointed to the Lok Sabha elections, in which the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi had won 30 of the state's 48 seats, reducing the ruling Mahayuti to 17.
The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance on November 23 retained power in Maharashtra, maintaining sway over 230 of the 288 assembly seats, while the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s dream of wresting power fizzled, with the opposition combine ahead in just 50 seats.
As per the latest figures from the Election Commission, the BJP has so far won 35 seats and is leading in 78, the Shiv Sena won 27 and is ahead in 29 seats, while the NCP has won 25 and is leading in 16 seats.