Bambai se aaya mera ‘naya’ dost: Why Aaditya and Tejashwi have hit ‘like’ | Political Pulse News,The Indian Express

Uddhav Sena needs every vote it can get in coming BMC polls, and Bihar migrants rank high up there; sans Lalu, Tejashwi can do with contemporary friends

This is the same Shiv Sena that built its politics and vote base in Mumbai with its strident “Marathi Manoos” campaign, directed specifically against migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. But, then, it is not the same Shiv Sena — split vertically down the middle, with one half dependent on the BJP and the other led by Uddhav desperate to hold on to the BMC to establish itself as the real Sena.

As the Bihar BJP attacked the RJD and partner JD(U) for hobnobbing with a party that had bad mouthed people from the state, both Aaditya and Tejashwi insisted that all that was a thing of the past and that, for them, the future lay in “Opposition unity”.

In Patna, Aaditya met both Tejashwi, the Bihar Deputy Chief Minister, and JD(U) chief and CM Nitish Kumar, who is pretty choosy about whom he grants an audience to.

In the last BMC polls, held in 2017, the BJP had given the then united Sena a scare, winning 82 seats to its 84 in the 227-member corporation. The wards recently saw delimitation, which the Opposition claims favours the BJP, while the Uddhav Sena is bound to lose some of its vote bank to the Shinde faction. That makes any additional vote valuable, which is where the migrants come in. Migrants from the North, mostly UP and Bihar, are believed to add up to 20% of Mumbai’s population.

The Shiv Sena has controlled the BMC for more than two decades, and a win here is a must for Uddhav to hold on to his cadre at a time when the Shinde faction has more MLAs, MPs and holds power.

https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/bambai-aaditya-tejashwi-8287950/

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