Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate Amit Thackeray on Saturday lost the state Assembly polls from Mumbai’s Mahim constituency by just over 17,000 votes, data from the Election Commission showed.
The party failed to win a single seat in the state, garnering less than 2% of the popular vote.
Amit Thackeray, who is the son of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray, secured 33,062 votes but lost to Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) candidate Mahesh Baliram Sawant by 17,151 votes. Sada Sarvankar of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena came second, trailing by 1,316 votes.
The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena was founded in 2006 by Raj Thackeray after his exit from the then-undivided Shiv Sena.
The party won 13 seats in the first Assembly election that it contested in 2009. However, it could win only one seat each in the 2014 and 2019 state elections.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena had extended unconditional support to the state’s ruling Mahayuti alliance. However, the party contested the current Assembly elections alone.
The Mahayuti alliance comprises the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shinde-led faction of the Shiv Sena and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party group.