‘BJP may fight 20 seats in city, Sena 14 & NCP 2’

Mumbai: BJP on Sunday released its candidate list for 14 seats in Mumbai, but the names of its sitting MLAs in three seats—Borivli (Sunil Rane), Versova (Bharti Lavekar) and Ghatkopar East (Parag Shah)—were not included. Party functionaries said BJP is likely to contest 20-21 seats in the city this time, and a second list of candidates will be announced after seat sharing talks with Shiv Sena and NCP conclude.
A Sena functionary said the party is likely to contest 14-15 seats in Mumbai and NCP two to three seats. There is no clarity on whether the three sitting MLAs whose names were not on the first list will be dropped or repeated.
In 2019, BJP had fought 19 seats and won 16. BJP has repicked all the sitting MLAs so far, except for Lavekar, Shah and Rane. "Eknath Shinde-led Sena is asking for at least 15 seats in Mumbai. They have six sitting MLAs now and will stake a claim to all the seats that have sitting Sena (UBT) MLAs. So, seat sharing talks in Mahayuti are still ongoing and Shinde is playing hardball just like he did in the Lok Sabha polls. The talks are expected to conclude later this week," said a political observer.
During the Lok Sabha polls, Shinde's Sena had contested from three seats in the city—Mumbai South, South-Central and North-West—winning two of them. During the seat sharing talks then, many had believed that Shinde would get only two seats and BJP would contest the remaining four. But eventually, Shinde managed to wrest three seats from BJP and win one seat. BJP managed to win only one of the three seats it contested from.
NCP, led by Ajit Pawar, is likely to contest two seats in Mumbai—Anushakti Nagar and Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar. The party has only one sitting MLA, Nawab Malik, in Mumbai. Malik is an MLA from Anushakti Nagar.
In 2019, the united Shiv Sena had contested 19 seats and won 14, but it was in alliance with BJP. Going by the Lok Sabha poll results, MVA leads in 20 out of 36 seats in Mumbai. Out of the six sitting MLAs that the Sena has, it led in only two assembly segments of Mahim and Magathane in the Lok Sabha polls.