In a mini elections of sorts held ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Yuva Sena – the youth wing of the Shiv Sena (UBT) –swept the Mumbai University (MU) Senate polls from the Graduates’ constituency by bagging all the 10 seats and handing a humiliating defeat to the ruling BJP’s students wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the polls.
In a repeat of its sweep posted in the March 2018 Mumbai University Senate polls when it had won all the ten seats from the Graduates’ constituency, the Yuv Sena – led by Sena MLA and former state minister Aaditya Thackeray — scored a perfect ten when the counting ended in a vast electoral constituency spread over 850-odd affiliated colleges Mumbai and neighbouring districts of Thane, Palghar, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg.
The ABVP drew a blank in the MU Senate polls – in which there were 28 candidates for the ten seats. Nearly 55 per cent of 13,406 graduate-voters had cast their votes in 38 polling stations and 64 polling booths. Candidates required a minimum of 1,114 votes to win in the open category.
“Once again! 10 on 10 it is ! We have not only repeated but bettered our performance at the Mumbai University Graduate Senate elections.
100 percent strike rate. From here we start the election victory stream,” Aditya Thackeray wrote on micro-blogging site “X” early today, thanking all his colleagues in the Yuva Sena and SS (UBT).
The Yuva Sena not only walked away with all the five open-category seats in the Graduates’ constituency, but it also posted a victory in all five reserved-category seats which included candidates from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Nomadic Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and women.
The ten Yuv Sena candidates who romped home in the polls were: Sneha Gawli, Sheetal Sheth Devrukhkar, Mayur Panchal, Dhanraj Kohchade, Kisan Sawant, Pradeep Sawant, Shashikant Zore, Milind Satam, Alpesh Bhoir and Paramatma Yadav
Yuva Sena supporters celebrated their victory, chanting slogans in favour of their leaders and distributing sweets.
In the normal course, the MU Senate polls were to be held in 2023 in 2023. However, the elections had been delayed over two years due to multiple hurdles, including political and legal disputes. The polls were finally held on September 24, after the Bombay High Court stayed a directive from Maharashtra’s higher and technical education department seeking postponement of the the elections,
The counting of votes that took place at the Cowasjee Jehangir Convocation Hall in Mumbai University’s Fort campus ended in the small hours of Saturday.
Accepting the defeat in the Mumbai University Senate polls, the ABVP’s Konkan region head Sankalp Phaldesai said: “It was an election between political giants and the student union.
We did our best. There may have been some strategic faults, which we will surely introspect. The ABVP congratulates the winning candidates and wishes them the very best. We hope they will now focus on solving the issues of the student fraternity rather than on political agendas.”
