Congress’ Tulip Miranda wins Bandra East by 7 votes as Mahayuti sweeps BMC

Miranda had won the ward in the 2017 civic polls also and has remained active in local civic and political affairs since then.

• Tulip Miranda won Bandra East by just seven votes in the 2026 BMC elections
• BJP-led Mahayuti secured a decisive victory, winning 120 out of 227 BMC seats
• Congress retained Bandra East despite citywide BJP-Shiv Sena dominance

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Congress candidate Tulip Miranda scraped through to victory in Bandra East (Ward No. 90), winning by a razor-thin margin of seven votes in the 2026 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, even as the BJP-led Mahayuti clinched a decisive mandate across Mumbai.

Miranda is a politician and advocate from Mumbai who has previously served as a corporator in the BMC, representing the Kalina-Bandra East area. She had won the ward in the 2017 civic polls also and has remained active in local civic and political affairs since then.

On November 10, 2025, in a key organisational move, the Congress leadership appointed her as the Mumbai president of the Mahila Congress, the party’s women’s wing, marking her rise within the city unit.

Polling for the 227-member civic body was held on January 15, with counting completed on January 16 under the supervision of the State Election Commission. The city recorded a voter turnout of 52.94 percent.

Bandra East, considered one of Mumbai’s most politically diverse wards, saw participation broadly in line with the city average.

According to official results, Miranda’s narrow win will now enable the Congress to retain Bandra East despite a strong citywide performance by the BJP-Shiv Sena (Shinde) alliance.

Meanwhile, at the city level, the Mahayuti registered a commanding victory, winning 120 seats in the BMC, well above the majority mark of 114. Of these, the BJP secured 93 seats, while the Shinde-led Shiv Sena won 27. The Shiv Sena (UBT)-led alliance finished with 73 seats, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) won 10, while both factions of the Nationalist Congress Party failed to win a single ward.

The results mark the BJP’s strongest-ever electoral victory in Mumbai’s civic body and effectively ended the Thackeray family’s three-decade dominance over the cash-rich BMC. The alliance’s victory also exceeded exit poll projections, which had forecast a win of 131-151 seats for the BJP and its allies across the city.

Moreover, beyond Mumbai, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in 19 other municipal corporations, placing it in a position to form mayors in at least 20 urban civic bodies, including Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Along with allies, the party now holds a majority in 23 of the 29 municipal corporations that went to polls.

In the BMC, the BJP improved on its 2017 performance, increasing its tally from 82 to 89 seats, while the Shinde-led Sena finished with 29. The Shiv Sena (UBT), though significantly reduced, managed to retain a foothold in the city with 65 seats, down from the undivided Sena’s 84 in 2017. The Congress won 24 seats, while AIMIM secured eight in Mumbai as part of its wider gains across municipal corporations.