Mumbai: The Sharad Pawar-led NCP suffered a huge blow ahead of the BMC elections as its Mumbai unit president Rakhi Jadhav joined BJP, and several poll aspirants, including Nitin Deshmukh and former corporator Dhananjay Pisal, defected to the Ajit Pawar-led NCP on Monday. The NCP (SP) seems on the verge of disintegration in Mumbai, political observers said, as state party president Shashikant Shinde and senior leader Jayant Patil failed to stitch an alliance with Maha Vikas Aghadi allies — Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress — despite several rounds of talks. Further, the two senior leaders did not give any direction to the cadre and local netas forcing them to look for alternative political options. “There is a total collapse of the NCP (SP) party machinery in Mumbai. This was purely because of poor handling of affairs,” a political observer said. “They should have allied with Ajit Pawar’s NCP like they are doing in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. But by not finalising an alliance with either side, they ended up destroying whatever little party organisation was there. They lost good candidates to BJP, which is a setback. It seems that NCP (SP) gave up BMC altogether. Surprisingly, Ajit Pawar’s NCP did better,” a political observer said.Pisal, who was previously an NCP group leader in the BMC, will now contest from ward no 111 on an Ajit Pawar-led NCP ticket. Three-time corporator Jadhav joined BJP as she was reportedly dissatisfied with the response from NCP (SP). “BJP is working for Mumbai, and I took this decision to work in my constituency. I did not get the expected response from NCP (SP), and we could not do justice to the party workers,” she said.On Monday, NCP (SP) released its first list of seven candidates for the BMC polls, including Ajit Raorane from ward no 43, Sanjay Kamnle from ward no 140, Manju Jaiswal from ward no 112, and Ganesh Shinde from ward no 48.The undivided NCP had eight corporators in the 2017 BMC polls, and party supremo Sharad Pawar was known to have a base in several wards.For over a week, the NCP (SP) held parallel negotiations with Sena (UBT) and Congress, but both alliances failed to work out. NCP (SP) initially demanded 50 seats from Congress after efforts to reach a workable seat-sharing arrangement with the Sena (UBT)-MNS combine did not materialise. Congress functionaries said they offered around two dozen seats to NCP (SP) since the party has presence in some areas.On Dec 26, Jayant Patil met Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray at Matoshree. Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said: “There is no need to announce that the NCP (SP) is with us…We left most of the seats that they wanted. That means an alliance was formed. Some of the seats they wanted went to the MNS, so we told them to discuss it with Raj Thackeray. We ended this issue from our side.”
