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After hectic campaigning and polling ended on Thursday, offices of political parties here are full of people and reports analysing the voting pattern in the six Lok Sabha constituencies.
Will a Modi wave sweep the six or not? Parties are prepared to continue debating till May 16, when counting is slated.
As reported earlier, voter turnout was 52.55 per cent from 41 per cent in the 2009 elections. Muslim turnout has risen to to 53 per cent from 32 per cent in 2009, a rise attributed to the ‘Modi factor’.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance argue the increase in voting is purely due to a Modi wave. The rival Congress-Nationalist Congress bloc say the rise was due to higher Muslim, Dalit and other backward classes’ turnout, to stop Modi.
The rise of 138,000 votes polled in the high-profile Mumbai South constituency has raised speculation on whether this means trouble for Union minister Milind Deora of the Congress, pitted against the Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Bala Nandgaonkar and Aam Aadmi Party’s Meera Sanyal. Deora, who’d won by a 112,000-vote margin in 2009, claims to enjoy a rapport with all the segments here — Muslim, Dalit, Gujarati, Marwari.
In Mumbai South Central, there was a rise in voting to 53.2 per cent from 39.5 per cent in 2009. Congress MP Eknath Gaikwad, optimistic on a hat trick, hopes a vote split between the Shiv Sena’s Rahul Shewale and MNS’ Aditya Shirodkar will benefit him. In Mumbai Northeast, where BJP nominee Kirit Somaiya is pitted against NCP's Sanjay Patil and the AAP’s Medha Patkar, 52.7 per cent polling was reported. There are diverse interpretations of what this portends, given the different segments where this came from. So, too, in Mumbai North, where Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam contests against BJP nominee Gopal Shetty and voting rose 12 percentage points, over a mixed population.
Nearly 60 per cent polling was reported in Mumbai North Central, where the BJP’s Poonam Mahajan is pitted against Congress’ Priya Dutt. In Mumbai Northwest, where the Congress’ Gurudas Kamat is engaged in a quadrangular fight against the Shiv Sena's Gajanan Kirtikar, MNS’ Mahesh Manjarekar and AAP's Mayank Gandhi, the rise in votes has been an average of 35,000 in all six assembly constituencies. The segments are spread over native Marathi speakers, north Indians, Gujarati speakers and Muslims, providing much argument for cause and likely effect, in both these Lok Sabha seats.
