Mumbai embraces BJP-Shiv Sena, dumps Congress-NCP

Mumbai, May 16 (IANS) The BJP-Shiv Sena is poised to make a clean sweep of Mumbai's six Lok Sabha seats, as per Friday's vote count trends.

In Mumbai South constituency, Congress candidate Murli Deora was trailing by over 60,000 votes to his nearest Shiv Sena rival Arvind Sawant.

Former union minister and AICC general secretary Gurudas Kamat was trailing by over 36,000 of votes behind his rival Shiv Sena nominee Gajanan Kirtikar in Mumbai North-West.

In Mumbai North-Central, Congress's Priya Dutt was trailing by around 60,000 votes behind Bharatiya Janata Party's Poonam Mahajan, niece of BJP leader Gopinath Munde and daughter of former party strongman, the late Pramod Mahajan.

And in Mumbai North, Congress's Sanjay Nirupam was trailing by over a lakh votes behind his BJP rival Gopal Shetty.

BJP's Kirit Somaiya was leading by around 25,000 votes over his nearest Nationalist Congress Party rival Sanjay Patil and Aam Aadmi Party's Medha Patkar in Mumbai North-East.

In Mumbai South-Central, Congress's Eknath Gaikwad was trailing by over 40,000 votes against his Shiv Sena rival Rahul Shewale.

The country's commercial capital and the stock markets gave a thumbs up to the BJP-SS alliance and totally rejected the Congress-NCP alliance.

In the 2009 elections, the situation had been exactly the opposite with the Congress-NCP bagging all the six seats.