With the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s Rutuja Latke and the BJP’s Murji Patel filing nominations on Thursday for the Andheri East assembly by-elections, the stage has been set for an intense political battle whose result will portend how politics in the state plays out in the coming few months.
The Andheri East constituency, with a voter base of roughly 2.78 lakh, has seen a Sena candidate win two of the three assembly elections that have been conducted since its formation in 2009.
As nearly one in every third voter in the constituency is a Marathi-speaking person, the population profile gave the Sena an advantage, making it a dominant player. The late Ramesh Latke contested three elections on a Sena ticket, losing the 2009 polls to Congress candidate Suresh Shetty and then going on to win the seat twice in the 2014 and 2019 Assembly elections.
The Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena is banking on this support to help it retain the crucial seat. A result in its favour will be the sign of a seismic recovery for the Thackeray-led Sena as this will be its first electoral battle after facing a vertical split in the wake of a rebellion spearheaded by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and other MLAs. While the Shinde faction has not fielded its candidate, it will be supporting the BJP candidate. The BJP-Shinde alliance and the Uddhav-led Sena will be pitted against each other in the election, with the latter getting support from NCP and Congress, its MVA allies.
The BJP, meanwhile, is banking on the support of the large Gujarati and Marwadi population, which accounts for close to 15 per cent of the constituency’s residents. It is also banking on the goodwill of its candidate, former corporator Murji Patel, who was propped up by the party and fought as an independent in the 2019 Assembly elections, in spite of the BJP having an alliance with the Shiv Sena.
Patel had received over 45,000 votes and emerged as a runner-up to Latke, losing by 17,000 votes. The BJP is hopeful that a split in the Sena’s support base and the consolidation of its own voter base will help Patel cross the winning line this time.
The political dynamics
There are a total of eight civic electoral wards in this Assembly constituency, of which four fall in its jurisdiction entirely, while the other four are partly divided between Andheri East, Jogeshwari, and Vile Parle assembly constituencies.
Of the four wards that fall entirely in the constituency, BJP won in three wards and Shiv Sena in one in the 2017 civic polls.
In the one ward won by the Sena candidate, the BJP candidate was the runner-up, while in the three wards that the BJP won in, the runners-up were from Sena and Congress.