Course correction meeting: MNS members want party to join Mahayuti

The MNS, after failing in assembly polls, seeks to join the Mahayuti alliance for BMC elections and aims for policy changes to regain relevance.

MUMBAI: The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), which failed to get a single seat in the state assembly polls, held a meeting on Monday to analyse what went wrong and do course correction. Many of the defeated candidates said they must enter the Mahayuti alliance and get at least 30 seats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections and ask for at least one or two MLC seats, for the party to survive. In 2017, the MNS had seven corporators, but Shiv Sena engineered a split and got six corporators into their fold leaving just one with Raj Thackeray.

Course correction meeting: MNS members want party to join Mahayuti

Some candidates also pointed out that since Thackeray, in whose house the meeting was held, had said that a BJP government would be formed in the state and Devendra Fadnavis will be CM again, many MNS voters could have voted for the Mahayuti.

One candidate said that MNS was viewed as a vote-cutter - a party that cut into the votes of the Sena UBT, Shiv Sena, and BJP. Hence, they must portray themselves as a serious party and not as one that was fielding candidates only to divide rivals’ votes.

ask for at least one or two MLC seats

Many officer bearers also called for a change in the party’s policies.

In the 2009 assembly polls, MNS had won 13 seats and won one seat in 2014 and 2019 respectively. This time, the party drew a blank, even losing the Mahim seat from where party chief’s son Amit contested and came third. Raj Thackeray has described the assembly results as “unbelievable”.