Sena UBT's Aaditya Thackeray Leads Shinde Sena's Milind Deora In High-Stakes Worli Battle

One of the most high-profile battles in the Maharashtra assembly election is unfolding in the Worli constituency, where Aaditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) chief Uddhav Thackeray, holds a slim lead over Milind Deora, the candidate from the Eknath Shinde faction.

As of 12:45 pm on Saturday, Deora, a former Congress MP who joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in January, was trailing Thackeray by a margin of 1,700 votes.

Photo Credit: PTI

According to the Election Commission website, nine of the 17 rounds of counting have been completed.

The lead has shifted multiple times. Thackeray initially took an early lead, but Deora later moved narrowly ahead. However, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader has since regained the upper hand.

In the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections, Aaditya Thackeray made his electoral debut in the Worli constituency, winning by an impressive margin of over 67,000 votes.

The constituency is part of the Mumbai South Lok Sabha seat, historically a stronghold of the Deora family. Murli Deora, Milind Deora's father, represented the seat three times between 1984 and 1991 and again in 1998. Milind Deora succeeded him, winning as a Congress MP in 2004 and 2009. However, the Shiv Sena began its dominance in 2014, with sitting MP Arvind Sawant, who joined the Eknath Shinde faction after the party split in 2022, retaining the seat this year.

Ahead of the elections, Deora, now a Rajya Sabha MP, denied any personal rivalry with Thackeray but criticised his leadership.

Thackeray, in turn, accused the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena of corruption, citing the recent Lok Sabha elections where the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi won 30 of Maharashtra's 48 seats, reducing the ruling Mahayuti to just 17.

"The biggest difference, if you look at the Lok Sabha polls too, is that people have realised that the BJP is a party of hollow promises. Maharashtra will stand against Eknath Shinde and BJP, who have looted the state," he told NDTV after his candidature was announced.