Clean sweep: BJP wins all 8 Pune seats

In a show of strength, BJP bulldozed the opposition — NCP, Congress and estranged ally Shiv Sena — to win all the eight assembly seats in Pune city.

The party wrested five new seats out of eight while retaining three where all its sitting MLAs won with convincing margins, contrary to expectations of a close fight in view of five-cornered electoral fights following breaking of both the alliances in the state.

Shiv Sena failed to retain two seats it had won in 2009 - the prestigious Kothrud constituency and Hadapsar - where its renominated candidates and sitting MLAs Chandrakant Mokate and Mahadeo Babar lost to their BJP rivals Medha Kulkarni and Yogesh Tilekar, respectively.

For the Sena, the defeat in Kothrud, a traditional stronghold of the party since the days of late Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, will hurt the most as Mokate was humbled by Medha Kulkarni by a margin over 45,000 votes.