Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday scored a major victory by bagging 41 seats in the 70-seat Latur municipal council, a former Congress stronghold where it had literally no presence in 2012.
Latur had been a Congress bastion for the last 60 years, but the party managed to win only 28 seats on Friday. In fact, the grand old party had reigned supreme in the municipality, zilla parishad, all four civic councils and panchayat samitis when its leader Vilasrao Deshmukh, a former Chief Minister, was alive.
The district had also given Congress another chief minister earlier, Shivajirao Nilangekar Patil, who had the top job from June 1985 to March 1986.
This time, however, the BJP has turned the tables on the late Deshmukh’s son, Amit Deshmukh, a former minister of state.
While the BJP could not win a single seat in Latur in 2012, the Congress had a one-sided mandate with 49 while the Shiv Sena had won six and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) 13. This time, the NCP managed to bag a single seat while the Sena got none.
