Anurag Thakur to tour Mumbai South Central LS seat on Monday to shore up BJP fortunes

Senior BJP leader Anurag Thakur will visit Mumbai on Monday to shore up the BJP's fortunes in Mumbai South Central Lok Sabha seat, currently held by Rahul Shewale of the Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde faction.

The Union minister for Information and Broadcasting, and Sports will tour six assembly constituencies under the Lok Sabha seat and hold meetings with the district core committee to assess the political situation in the region, where elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are long overdue.

Of the six assembly constituencies, the BJP has legislators in two – R Tamil Selvan in Sion Koliwada and Kalidas Kolambkar in Wadala.

Mahim assembly seat is held by Sada Sarwankar of the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena.

NCP leader Nawab Malik and Congress leader Varsha Gaikwad represent Anushakti Nagar and Dharavi assembly seats respectively. Prakash Phaterpekar from the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena represents Chembur.

This will be Thakur's second visit to Mumbai as part of outreach efforts by the BJP to win 166 seats it had lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He has been tasked with shoring up the BJP's fortunes in Kalyan Lok Sabha seat, which is represented by Shrikant Shinde, the son of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

Thakur had toured Mumbai South Central and Kalyan parliamentary seats in September last year.

The identification of the difficult Lok Sabha seats was done when the Shiv Sena had walked out of an alliance with the BJP after the 2019 assembly elections to form the government with the Congress and the NCP.

"A strong BJP will benefit the alliance," Thakur had said, seeking to allay apprehensions in the Shinde camp about his party's expansion plans.

Eknath Shinde led a rebellion within the Shiv Sena in June last year and became the chief minister with the BJP's support.

The BJP had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the Shiv Sena and won 23 out of the 25 seats it had contested. The Shiv Sena, which had contested 23 seats, managed to win 18.

After the rebellion in the Shiv Sena, 12 of the 18 Lok Sabha members from Maharashtra had shifted allegiance to Shinde.