Mani D'mello

 

Parliamentary election 2014 will not be a cake walk for North Central Mumbai’ sitting Member of Parliament Priya Dutt. In the last parliamentary pols Priya Dutt had polled around 48 per cent poll and nearest rival advocate Mahesh Jethmalani of the Bharat Janata Party garnered only around 21.25 per cent votes who was closely followed by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s candidate Shilpa Sarpotdar who got nearly 20 per cent of the share of votes polled. 

 

Had MNS not jumped into the fray to play spoil sports for the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance with the sole intention to cut Sena to size because of the running personal-cum-political fued between the warring Thackeray cousins- Sena’s chief Uddhav and MNS president Raj, Priya’s boat would have been rocked badly. It is also believed that Jethmalani had seriously campaigned in the constituency to challenge the nearly two decade old Dutt’s family (Sunil Dutt and daugther Priya) dominace in the constituency. 

 

In the 2014 polls, Priya will need to pull up her stocks since her arch rival and BJP candidate Poonam Mahajan is no novice to polls. She is a home bread politician who has worked closely with her father Pramod Mahajan , who was the money bags of the BJP in the early nineties and continued to hold on to the purse strings of the BJP till he was shot dead in May 2006. Poonam has also inculcated Pramod’s organizational skills in national politics too. Poonam’s candidature was backed by her uncle and BJP Vice President Gopinath Munde. 

 

Priya though is not a lame duck who can be shot down easily by Poonam, all the same there is a need of cause of worry for her (Priya) as Poonam will be get immense back up support from Gopinath Munde’s political aides. For Munde, Poonam wresting the seat from Priya Dutt is a prestigious issue as North Central Mumbai which was carved out of North West Mumbai constituency in 2009, has been a fortress of the Dutt family. The Dutts had left it open in the 1995 polls for the Shiv Sena as Sunil Dutt was peeved with the Congress leadership over the issue of his son Sanjay Dutt being slapped with TADA in the 1993 blasts case.

 

Political pundits claim that BJP will hammer out an equation with Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asmi to re-contest the polls in North Central Mumbai to eat into Priya’s Muslim and Uttar Bharatiya vote bank and thereby facilitate Poonam’s victory. Further, if Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) decides not field candidates in constituencies where BJP is contesting, then Priya hopes of a repeat performance of the 2009 polls could turn out to be far-fetched.

 

In the 2009 polls,  Priya notched 3,19,352 votes, followed by Jethmalani who got 1,44,797 votes and MNS’ Silpa Sarpotdar who garnered 1,32,555 votes.  Had Sartopdar syaued awau from the polls, Jethmalani would have bagged the votes which went in favour of Sarpotdar who ensured that it spoilt the electoral show for the Sena and in the bargain damaged the Sena-BJP’s alliance’s prospects.

Flowing the implementation of the delimitation of the parliamentary constituencies in 2008, Mumbai North Central Lok Sabha constituency comprises the following six Vidhan Sabha segments: Vile Parle, Chandivali, Kurla, Vandre East, Vandre West and Kalina.f