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MNS chief Raj Thackeray during election rally at Girgaon in Mumbai on October 12 2014. (TOI photo)

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Supporters of the Shiv Sena party celebrate after learning of initial results of Maharashtra state election outside their party office in Mumbai. (Reuters photo)

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MUMBAI: You need to look at the fine print—the blank-outs, the defeats and the smaller victories—to get a sense of how Mumbai actually voted last Wednesday. Just looking at how well the winners have done will not reveal how the city’s political contours have changed over the last five years.For the record, BJP has become Mumbai’s most-favoured party with 15 seats. Shiv Sena is a close second with 14 and Congress a distant third with five. But it’s the missing name on the rolls—that of MNS—and the entry of a new name, MIM’s, that actually reveal more about the voter’s mind.The change in MNS’s political fortunes is the most dramatic shift. It has disappeared from Mumbai’s electoral map, losing in strongholds like Sewri, Mahim and Magathane.Candidates the party assumed to be invincible—Bala Nandgaonkar, Nitin Sardesai and Pravin Darekar—have bitten the dust. But it’s more the manner of losing and the margins involved in these losses that are telling.Nandgaonkar, for instance, got less than half the votes his Sena opponent polled; for a man who once came second in a Lok Sabha fight, the 41,000-plus Vidhan Sabha defeat margin would be galling. His colleague and the incumbent in Magathane, Darekar, was pushed to a third-place finish; he, like Nandgaonkar, polled less than half the Sena winner’s share. Mahim MNS MLA Sardesai put up a better fight, losing to his Sena rival by less than 6,000 votes. But it is this loss that would hurt his boss, Raj Thackeray , the most.The Mahim assembly constituency includes some important physical markers that are part of Sena’s growth as the Marathi-speaking Mumbaikar’s main representative. It has Shivaji Park, a little more than a stone’s throw away from where Sardesai or Thackeray live; Shivaji Park is also the venue from where Raj’s uncle, Balasaheb Thackeray, used to deliver his fiery speeches that the Marathi manoos would lap up.The constituency that used to be Sardesai’s has another landmark: Sena Bhavan, the Shiv Sena’s headquarters. MNS workers would use the crossing in front of Sena Bhavan for agitations to highlight the Sena-led BMC’s lack of competence to handle civic issues like Mumbai’s potholed roads. This zone is now suddenly Sena’s again. All this highlights one phenomenon: MNS’s slide from being the second-most popular party in Mumbai in 2009 (both in terms of vote share and seats). NCP, too, has been blanked out of Mumbai but—except for a seat or two—no one gave it too much of a chance after its split with Congress.It’s the opening of an account in Mumbai that can be termed the second most important taking from this election. The MIM, headquartered in Hyderabad, snatched Byculla from the more-established parties; what it says is the Muslim voter in Mumbai now has another choice besides the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (which held on to its Mankhurd seat). This contest has been extremely keen—less than 6,000 votes separate the top five candidates—but MIM polling more than BJP, Congress, the Sena-supported candidate as well as the MNS says a lot.The MNS decimation may be good news for the Sena but the strong BJP showing would be a bad omen. That the BJP could win 15 seats—one more than the Sena—in Mumbai and in an election where the Sena made Marathi asmita an issue would worry Matoshree. That the wins were spread over Mumbai, where the Sena vaunts its organization and a city the Sena can bring to a halt, would add to the worry.Mumbai sends only five Congress MLAs to the assembly—12 less than the 2009 tally of 17—but it would take heart from the fact that it has increased its tally from the three assembly segments it won in the LS poll less than six months ago. Factors and issues in LS and Assembly polls are vastly different—especially after the twin divorces—but the party could have done worse than this. It’s number three and number four in several constituencies but there’s at least a hint of a stemming of the slide in this performance.