Arvind Sawant Contests From South Mumbai For The Third Time (image@AGSawant)The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray – UBT) gave ticket to Arvind Ganpat Sawant from South Mumbai for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. He has been serving as South Mumbai’s MP since 2014. In 2014, while he was contesting in the 2014 election, he was marked as the ‘weak candidate’ by India Today. He was contesting against Milind Deora of the Indian National Congress then.
Sawant clinched a major victory with a margin of 120,000 votes. In the 2019 election, Sawant managed to defeat Deora again and bagged victory with the margin of more than 100,000 votes. It is widely claimed that this victory is due to the Narendra Modi effect which made the Gujarati, Marwari, and Jain voters, of the BJP, which was Shiv Sena’s then ally, voting for Sawant.
However, Shiv Sena (UBT) believes that the seat will remain under their clasp as they think the wind is blowing in their favour. The South Mumbai constituency have have a sizable presence of Marathi speakers, over 30-35 percentage, and the party also hopes that the region’s Muslim voters, which constitutes to over a fourth of the electorate will also support them in ousting BJP from coming to power.
Arvind Sawant served as the Minister pf Heavy Industry and Public Enterprise since 2019. After the 2019, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election, he quit as the union minister in the Modi government due to the power tussle between Sawant’s Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party.