Within the surprise of the Congress(I) taming the tiger of the Shiv Sena and the BJP in their own domain, Maharashtra, are many other amazing facts.
The BJP-Shiv Sena combine had together held 33 of 48 seats of the State ... but now the Congress(I) has the same number of seats and the alliance a mere 10. With the RPI bagging our seats - not a single one reserved for Scheduled Castes - it had contested with the Congress(I) support, the anti-saffron axis has 37 seats. The BJP-Sena combine has been totally wiped out in Vidarbha and most of the Marathwada regions of Maharashtra.
The Muslim constituency of the electorate was by and large dominated by the Samajwadi Party and the Congress(I) benefitted immensely from its alliance with it. But all three candidates of the Samajwadi Party lost at the hustings, indicating the one-way traffic of the vote transfer.
The BJP has been reduced to just four seats from the 18 it held and the Shiv Sena to 6 from 15. The victory margins of the combine have also been reduced. The saffron brigade, not only lost its previous gains but also yielded its traditional urban base.
The biggest jolt it got was in Mumbai, not just a bastion but the power house of the Shiv Sena and the BJP and also their largest base in the State ... BJP veteran Ram Naik, won the seat for the fourth consecutive term and yet the margin of Naik shrunk to a mere 55,000 votes from 2.56 lakhs in 1996 ... Shiv Sena's Mohan Rawale ... retained his South Central Mumbai seat by only 153 votes as against 58,600 votes last time.
In North West Mumbai, Madhukar Sarpotdar, the Sena's group leader in the Lok Sabha, saw his margin down to 20,000 from the earlier 88,400.
The Congress(I) and its ally grabbed as many as 18 seats from the BJP-Sena alliance with moderate to heavy margins and five seats with small margins. The party, however, substantially improved its winning margin in eight seats which it had held earlier .. (Source: The Hindu, 7 March, 1998)
