The western suburbs were where the Congress scored, winning with eight seats — almost half of its tally of 17 from the city.

While Borivli, Dahisar, Jogeshwari West, Goregaon and Charkop — dominated by Maharashtrians and Gujaratis — voted for the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Malad and Andheri East voted for the Congress. Citizen candidate Hansel D’Souza’s magic didn’t work in Andheri West as the Congress’ Ashokbhau Jadhav retained his seat. D’Souza left the counting booth, smiling and waving to a small band of supporters.

Five of the first-time winners were corporators — the Sena’s Ravindra Waikar in Jogeshwari East, the Congress’ Rajhans Singh in Dindoshi, Congressman Aslam Sheikh in Malad, the BJP’s Yogesh Sagar in Charkop and the Sena’s Bala Sawant in Bandra East.

Six of the seven MLAs in this region retained their seats.

The surprise element was the Congress losing its stronghold of Bandra East, with sitting MLA Janardan Chandurkar being trounced by Sawant.

Among the expected winners was sitting Sena MLA Subhash Desai in Goregaon.

Baba Siddique scraped through in Bandra West against the BJP’s Ashish Shelar with a close margin of 1,600 votes.

It was the clash of the Thakurs in Kandivli (E), which was won by Congress candidate Ramesh Singh Thakur against the BJP’s Jayprakash Thakur. Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s (MNS’) Pravin Dharakar won in Magathane.

Krishna Hegde, an aide of Congress MP Priya Dutt, won from Vile Parle. He celebrated in style with Chinese firecrackers — the kind reportedly used in the Beijing Olympics.

Shouting above the din that continued for an hour, he admitted that it was a close shave but said the people voted for “a cultured and educated candidate”.