BMC polls: Sena dumps mayor, 58 corporators

In a major blow to aspirations of over half of its sitting corporators, the Shiv Sena on Monday denied tickets to 58 corporators for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation election.

The Sena candidates' list, released on Monday, the last day of filing nominations for the February 1 poll, does not include the names of 58 of its sitting corporators in the 227-member Corporation.

The name of Mayor Datta Dalvi too does not figure in the Sena nominees' list.

The Sena has 104 corporators in the country's richest civic body, with a budget of around Rs 12,000

crore. The list was released by former Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi and another Sena spokesperson Neelam Gorhe at Sena Bhawan in central Mumbai.

The Sena, which controls the BMC along with the Bharatiya Janata Party, has entered into an electoral understanding with its saffron partner. Accordingly, it has put up 155 candidates while 72 seats have been left for the BJP. Almost 38 per cent nominees in the 155-member list declared on Monday by the party are women.