Congress candidate Abhijeet Wanjari was on Thursday declared the winner in the Maharashtra Legislative Council elections from Nagpur after a keenly watched counting exercise that stretched for more than 40 hours, PTI reported. Wanjari defeated the BJP's Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes to retain the Nagpur Division Graduates' constituency seat.
Source: PTI via The Sen Times
Wanjari, a sitting MLC, secured 67,231 votes, while Kohale, a former MLA, got 63,960 votes. Counting began on Tuesday morning and concluded in the wee hours of Thursday, PTI said.
Counting began at 8 am on October 27 at the Divisional Sports Complex in Mankapur, Nagpur, across 84 counting tables and continued for more than 41 hours, ANI reported. Of the 1,65,906 votes counted, 15,032 were declared invalid and 1,50,874 were valid. No candidate reached the required winning quota of 75,438 votes in the first-preference rounds, so counting moved to elimination rounds under the preferential voting system, and Wanjari, with the highest total, was declared elected. Returning Officer and Divisional Commissioner Vijayalakshmi Bidari presented him the certificate of election.
Source: ANI via Indian Economic Observer
Why the Nagpur result matters
The defeat is a setback for the BJP in Nagpur, the hometown of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the Lok Sabha constituency of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, both of whom campaigned for Kohale. Nagpur is also the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Gadkari himself represented the Nagpur graduates' constituency in the Legislative Council for 24 years, from July 1990 to May 2014, PTI noted.
After the result, Wanjari told reporters: "The BJP exerted all its might — all their leaders were present in Nagpur — yet the voters stood with us. Our party remained united, and the leaders and workers of the Maha Vikas Aghadi stood together as one." He said 48 organisations had backed him and credited their workers and leaders for the victory, ANI reported.
Maharashtra final tally: MVA 3, Mahayuti 2
With the Nagpur result, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi has won three of the five Maharashtra council seats polled on October 23, while the BJP-led Mahayuti won two. The NCP (SP) won the Pune Graduates' seat — Harshada Deshmukh-Jadhav defeated the BJP's Smita Jadhav — and the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Graduates' seat. The BJP's Kaustubh Gawade won the Pune Teachers' seat and Shiv Sena's Kiran Sarnaik won the Amravati Teachers' seat, PTI reported.
State Congress chief Harshwardhan Sapkal said the BJP nominee had been defeated in Nagpur, which has the RSS headquarters, and that "the bubble of illusion has burst". The state Congress also taunted Fadnavis over a deleted social media post that had said the Congress scored a "big fat zero" in the polls. NCP leader Praful Patel called for an immediate review of his party's priorities and organisational structure after its sole candidate lost, PTI reported. These are the parties' own claims and reactions, reported as attributed statements.
Polling for 28 Legislative Council seats across Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra was held on October 23, and the Election Commission has scheduled completion of the entire election process by October 31, ANI reported. In the 78-member Maharashtra Legislative Council, the BJP remains the largest party with 35 members, followed by the Shiv Sena with 12 and the NCP with 10; the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) have five each and the NCP (SP) two, with four independent members, according to PTI.