In a major setback to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), four councillors of Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have decided to back Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in the Ambernath municipal council. The development comes after reports emerged that the saffron party has formed an alliance with Congress in Ambernath to keep Shiv Sena out of power, a move which was later rejected by both sides.
The Ambernath municipal council has 60 councillors. The Shiv Sena has 27 councillors, followed by BJP which has 14 councillors. The Congress and the NCP have 12 and four councillors, respectively. Now, 27 Shiv Sena councillors are backed by four NCP councillors and an Independent. In total, the Shiv Sena has support of 32 councillors.
According to sources, local leaders of the NCP had expressed discomfort in sharing power with Congress and had told the party leadership that they had been opposing the grand old party in Ambernath since 2023. They had told the party leadership that forming an alliance with Congress was not 'acceptable'. Thus, the party has now decided to back the Shiv Sena.
Here, it must be noted that the Shiv Sena, the BJP and the NCP are part of the Mahayuti, but the alliance contested the municipal council elections in Ambernath separately.
A BJP-Congress alliance?
The BJP-Congress alliance in Ambernath had surprised many in Maharashtra, forcing Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to issue a clarification. Fadnavis later said that any alliance with Congress is unacceptable and the "decision taken at the local level in Ambernath will be rectified".
Talking about the 12 Congress councillors, they have joined the BJP, giving another jolt to the grand old party. The party has now decided to seek disqualification of all the 12 councillors -- Pradeep Nana Patil, Darshana Patil, Archana Charan Patil, Harshada Pankaj Patil, Tejaswini Milind Patil, Vipul Pradeep Patil, Manish Mhatre, Dhanlakshmi Jayashankar, Sanjavani Rahul Devde, Dinesh Gaikwad, Kiran Badrinath Rathod and Kabir Naresh Gaikwad.
"The Congress party will initiate legal action to get the membership of these councillors cancelled. Legal notices will be issued to all of them shortly," Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said in a statement on Thursday.
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