Sarvankar beat his closest Congress rival Annie Shekhar by a margin of nine votes. Of the total 27 votes polled by members of the standing committee, Sarvankar received 18, while Annie managed to get nine.

In the election to the post of education committee chairperson, Goithale got 15 votes, while Congress candidate R Pillai got 7. There were four absentees.

Elections for the posts of BEST committee and Improvements Committee chairperson will be held on Friday.

Sarvankar (41) had been the Shiv Sena's Prabhadevi shakha pramukh from 1979 to 1992. After this, he was elected as corporator from the area. He has only studied up to SSC.

In an official speech, Sarvankar today said he will try to improve water supply and find a solution to the growing pollution inMumbai.

Following the recent disbanding of the Mayor-in-Council, the newly-formed standing committee met for the first time today. Sena member Vijay M Daruwale raised a point of order on the ongoing controversy involving erratic power supply by the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), which had resulted in 15 per cent water cut in the city.

Daruwale was supported not only by his own party members, but also by some from the opposition, like K A Bastiwala. They all agreed that the problem of power supply had to be quickly resolved with MSEB, considering the fact that BMC had recently raised the water tax.

Mayor Hareshwar Patil agreed to discuss the water problem in the next meeting of the standing committee.