Mumbai: The biggest and shocking news of this time is coming out from the politics of Maharashtra. The results of Maharashtra Legislative Council (MLC) elections have shaken the ground from under the feet of Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA). In this election, even the accounts of Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) could not be opened. On the other hand, the Mahayuti alliance led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has made a historic clean sweep and has defeated the opposition on all sides.
Out of the total 17 MLC seats in the state, BJP, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP have won a landslide victory on 16 seats. At the same time, a rebel BJP candidate has surprised everyone by winning the election as an independent candidate on only one remaining seat.
Uddhav Thackeray gets double blow and big game in Nagpur
These results, which came amid the recent political rebellion and upheaval by Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs in Maharashtra, have given a double blow to Uddhav Thackeray. On one hand, his party has already been weakened by internal rebellion and now due to his party being swept in the Legislative Council elections, the morale of the workers has been completely broken.
However, in this entire election, the biggest and unexpected political upheaval has been seen on the seats of Nagpur and Nashik. In Nashik, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s party suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of a rebel BJP candidate, breaking Mahayuti’s dream of a perfect score of 17-0.
BJP and Shinde group’s influence in these districts
According to the final results of Maharashtra Legislative Council elections, BJP candidates have won unilaterally on VIP seats like Sangli-Satara, Nagpur, Bhandara-Gondia, Amravati and Dharashiv. At the same time, in a very sensitive seat like Parbhani-Hingoli, Muslim candidate Saeed Khan of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena has silenced his opponents by winning a landslide victory.
Let us tell you that out of 17 seats in this election, candidates had already been elected completely unopposed on 6 seats, while counting of votes for the remaining 11 seats took place on Monday. The lucky candidates who won unopposed include Vikram Kakade from Pune, Prajakta Tanpure from Ahilyanagar, Ravindra Phatak from Thane, Aniket Tatkare from Konkan, Dushyant Chaturvedi from Yavatmal and Arun Lakhani from Wardha-Gadchiroli-Chandrapur seat. The thing to note is that all these six leaders who won the elections unopposed are also associated with the ruling Mahayuti alliance.
Congress’s crushing defeat in Nanded, Amravati and Dharashiv
If we look at the interesting data of seat wise results, BJP’s Amarnath Rajurkar has won the Nanded Legislative Council seat with a big victory. He defeated the strong Congress candidate Ramdas Patil. On the other hand, from Parbhani-Hingoli seat, Saeed Khan of Shiv Sena (Shinde faction) defeated Dr. Vivek Navander of Uddhav Thackeray’s party by securing 242 votes.
Congress has faced a huge embarrassment on Amravati seat. Here, former BJP minister Praveen Pote registered a one-sided record victory by securing 390 votes, while Congress candidate Harshjit Deshmukh did not get a single vote to open the account. Whereas, Nilesh Vishwakarma of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi had to be satisfied with 31 votes.
Talking about Dharashiv-Latur-Beed region, BJP’s Basavaraj Patil defeated Congress’s Mahesh Deshmukh by a huge margin of 721 votes. Patil got a total of 845 votes, while Congress’ Deshmukh got only 124 votes.
The magic of Mahayuti works in Nagpur and Jalgaon
BJP’s dominance continued even in the high-profile by-election for Nagpur MLC seat. Here Dr. Rajeev Potdar of BJP defeated Atul Londhe of Congress by a huge margin of 552 votes. Potdar got a total of 682 votes, while Londhe of Congress had to be satisfied with only 130 votes.
BJP’s Avinash Brahmankar won from Bhandara-Gondiya constituency by defeating Congress-backed independent candidate Naresh Ishwarkar by 148 votes. Brahmankar got a total of 304 votes. Similarly, in Jalgaon seat, BJP’s Nandkishore Mahajan gave the most shameful defeat to Sharad Tayde of Mahavikas Aghadi (Uddhav faction). Mahajan got 577 votes, while Taide of Uddhav group could get only 5 votes from the entire district.
Electoral equation of Sangli and Solapur
Talking about Sangli-Satara constituency, here BJP’s patient move defeated Abhaysingh Jagtap of Mahavikas Aghadi by 301 votes. Dhairyasheel Kadam secured a total of 593 votes, while Jagtap could garner only 292 votes.
BJP’s Suhas Shirsat registered a major victory from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar-Jalna constituency by securing 455 votes. On this seat, Ganesh Lokhande of the Uddhav Thackeray faction got only 135 votes, while MIM-backed independent candidate Isak Khan got only 35 votes. In Solapur seat also, BJP’s Rajendra Raut defeated NCP’s Vasantrao Deshmukh by 365 votes. Raut got a total of 483 votes, while Deshmukh got only 118 votes in this area which has the credibility of Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar.
The rebellion in Nashik proved costly and resort politics failed.
The result of Nashik seat is the most discussed in this entire election, where Narendra Darade, the official candidate of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde faction, has faced a crushing defeat. Gokul Gite has defeated him in the election field. The most special and interesting thing about this seat is that Gokul Gite himself is a big local leader of BJP, but in the seat sharing formula of Mahayuti, this seat had gone to Shinde faction, due to which the party did not give him the ticket. Angered by not getting the ticket, Gokul Geete rebelled against the party and contested the election as an independent candidate and won.
Just before this election, due to the fear of cross voting and horse trading, Shiv Sena and BJP had organized all their corporators in a luxurious hotel in Thane amidst heavy security to keep them united. But this heavy-handed strategy of ‘resort politics’ proved to be a complete failure in Nashik and BJP rebel Gokul Gite made his power felt by defeating the official candidate of Mahayuti.
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