Ashish Shelar BJP’s Mumbai Chief seeks third term from one-time Cong bastion
Ashish Shelar BJP’s Mumbai Chief seeks third term from one-time Cong bastion
The ‘Queen” of Mumbai suburb, Bandra West has plush houses and is a home to B’town’s top film stars.
Notedly, till 2014, localities from Santacruz and Khar, was a Congress stronghold before the BJP wrested it through its city unit chief and high-profile leader and lawyer Ashish Shelar.
Shelar, is seeking a third win in the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections. He is pitted against the Congress’ Asif Zakaria, defeated by the former in 2019 by a margin of 26,507 votes.
Bandra West assembly seat has 2,87,657 voters, comprising 1,49,443 men and 1,38,204 women. It has some of the plush houses in the city.
The area sees a steady stream of visitors all through the year as people from across the country arrive to catch a glimpse of film icons Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan.
As per observers, scarcity of basic amenities, shortage of housing, slum redevelopment curbs due to CRZ, especially in congested areas like Khar Danda, home to slums and fisherfolk settlements, are issues facing the electorate.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to the Mumbai North Central seat, BJP’s lawyer-turned-politician Ujjwal Nikam got a lead of 3,500 votes over Congress’ Varsha Gaikwad, the eventual winner, from the Bandra West assembly segment.
Christians, Scheduled Castes, other backward classes and muslims form a sizable chunk of the voters.
People of the constituency see Zakaria, a three time corporator, as honest and accessible. He has been highlighting the work done by him as well as Congress MPs Sunil Dutt and Priya Dutt amidst their tenures.
However, Shelar is focusing on local issues, with his supporters claiming he has managed to regain the lost glory of Bandra, often referred to as the ‘queen of the suburbs’.
According to them, Shelar has focused on redevelopment of ‘gaothans’, open spaces, gardens, adding property rates have gone up in the area due to its redevelopment and beautification. Shelar has expedited work on SRA projects, road concretisation, local market development, they added.
He is working on the beautification of areas through which a metro rail line passes, including a Bollywood theme along its 350 pillars.
The BJP MLA is also working on easing traffic snarls due to north-bound vehicles coming from the recently inaugurated coastal road, these supporters claimed.
Infact, in 2014, Shelar in defeated Baba Siddique,
gunned down recently. Siddique was the Congress MLA of the area since 1999.
Siddique,had joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP before he was gunned down on October 12. The party is an ally of the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena.
News Edit KV Raman
