Deora's victory was assisted by the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena which took away a huge number of votes from the Shiv Sena's [Images] Mohan Rawle.

Creating a record of sorts -- no other candidate has ever won this seat consecutively -- Deora seemed conciliatory as he addressed the media late on Saturday.

"Be it the Shiv Sena, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or the Bahujan Samaj Party I thank them all for putting up a good fight, for understanding and raising important issues and for generally fighting this election on a positive note," said the 33-year-old who was locked in an interesting triangular fight with the MNS's Bala Nandgaonkar and the Sena's Mohan Rawle, who moved to Mumbai South after he won the Mumbai South Central Lok Sabha seat in 2004.

Nandgaonkar polled 159,000 votes that directly ate into the Sena's votebank, enabling Deora to romp home by over 112,000 votes. Rawle emerged third with 146,000 votes.

There were some Sena strongholds that Rawle got just five votes, promoting him to allege that the electronic voting machines had been tampered with.