Why Sena minister Pratap Sarnaik has opened ‘voter fraud’ front against BJP?

The charge is significant not only because it targets the BJP, a party with which the Eknath Shinde-led Sena is allied in the state government, but also because it comes against the backdrop of Sarnaik’s long-running rivalry with BJP MLA Narendra Mehta.

At one level, the dispute is about the voter list. At another, it is about who controls Mira-Bhayandar.

Sarnaik has claimed that the electorate in the Mira-Bhayandar Assembly constituency had fallen from around 5.14 lakh to 3.01 lakh following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). He alleged that duplicate and fraudulent voters had helped the BJP in the civic polls.

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According to figures cited by Sarnaik, 5,14,955 voters were earlier registered in the relevant rolls. The SIR exercise identified 2,13,045 entries for deletion, while 47,901 voters remained unmapped and 48,379 cases had discrepancies.

Sarnaik has portrayed the scale of deletions as evidence of bogus voters. But that interpretation is not established merely by an entry being marked “uncollectable” or excluded. Such entries can also include cases where forms could not be collected, voters could not be contacted or details require verification.

Mehta has dismissed Sarnaik’s allegations as “ridiculous”. He has also questioned the logic of attacking the electoral rolls when the same rolls were used by Sena candidates and leaders.

Numbers that changed Balance

The January civic election dramatically altered the political balance in Mira-Bhayandar.

The BJP won 78 seats, compared with just three for the Sena. The Congress won 13 seats and an Independent secured one. BJP’s Dimple Mehta was subsequently elected mayor with 79 votes, while Congress candidate Rubina Sheikh received 16.

The BJP’s gains have given it near-complete control of the corporation and substantially strengthened Mehta’s position in local politics.

Sarnaik is a minister and an MLA from neighbouring the Ovala-Majiwada seat, part of which falls under the MBMC, but the party he represents has little presence inside the civic body. The Sena and BJP also contested the 2026 civic election separately after failing to agree on seat sharing, despite remaining allies at the state level.

A Sena source described the conflict between the two leaders as essentially a battle over “who controls Mira-Bhayandar”.

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The BJP, however, sees Sarnaik’s attacks as an attempt to challenge Mehta after the civic election left the Sena politically weakened.

Sarnaik had made the distinction himself during the campaign. Rather than targeting the BJP’s state leadership, he repeatedly attacked Mehta, describing the local BJP organisation as effectively “Mehta’s company” and blaming him for the failure of a BJP-Sena alliance in the city.

Rivalry predates alliance

In the 2019 Assembly election, Mehta’s political dominance was challenged by BJP rebel and former Mira-Bhayandar Mayor Geeta Jain. Mehta polled 64,049 votes, while Jain, contesting as an Independent, won with 79,575 votes.

Jain later joined the Shiv Sena, turning an electoral setback for Mehta into a political gain for the Sena.

Mehta recovered in 2024, winning the Mira-Bhayandar Assembly seat with 54.87% of the vote. Sarnaik, meanwhile, retained Ovala-Majiwada with a margin of more than one lakh votes.

The conflict has repeatedly spilled into the functioning of the corporation.

In 2019, a dispute over the Bal Thackeray cultural auditorium escalated into a confrontation inside the civic body. Sena corporators and workers ransacked the mayor’s office and standing committee hall after the issue was not taken up. Sarnaik defended his workers, saying, “I am proud of my workers and they have done the right thing.”

Mehta demanded an apology and warned that the confrontation could have consequences for the alliance.

The issues have since expanded from civic politics to water, infrastructure, land and development.

In 2023, Sarnaik accused a political leader of blocking access to private land and delaying work on a water-storage tank connected to the Surya water project. Mehta responded that the project was already delayed and accused his rivals of shifting the blame.

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In May 2025, BJP’s Mira-Bhayandar district chief Dilip Jain alleged that Sarnaik had used his ministerial position to secure road and drainage works worth Rs 150 crore near property associated with him.

Sarnaik denied the allegation and instead sought an inquiry into the charges against him as well as allegations made by Sena leaders against Mehta. He wrote to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar.

The two leaders have also clashed over Metro projects and land. In April this year, Sarnaik referred to Mehta’s alleged land holdings while speaking in the presence of senior government leaders. He later said he had raised the issue because government projects repeatedly faced land-related obstacles.

The Marathi factor

The political contest has also acquired a linguistic dimension.

Protests followed Dimple Mehta’s election as mayor, with Marathi groups objecting to a non-Marathi mayor. Sarnaik, however, sought to play down the controversy, pointing out that similar objections had not been raised when non-Marathi leaders had held the post in the past.

He urged political parties to focus instead on civic issues and development.

The voter list controversy has therefore added a new weapon to an old political fight.

For Sarnaik, the objective is to prevent the Sena from becoming irrelevant in Mira-Bhayandar despite his own stature in the state government. For Mehta, the priority is to protect the BJP’s control over the corporation and strengthen his local political machinery.

Sarnaik’s latest remarks are the latest expression of a larger struggle over who gets to define the political future of Mira-Bhayandar.