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PUNE/NAGPUR: The Maharashtra legislative council elections have exposed fault lines in the state’s Mahayuti coalition, with BJP losing Nagpur to Congress and NCP failing to win a seat as the allies traded accusations of cross-campaigning and poor candidate choices.
BJP contested three seats in Maharashtra but won only Pune graduates, where Kaustubh Gawade defeated Shiv Sena rebel Sachin Sanap.
Corrective measures will be taken,” Bawankule said. “Had Mahayuti contested unitedly, we would have won all five seats,” they said. “We’ll track down who played spoilsport. A BJP member alleged that Sena workers campaigned against its candidate Smita Jadhav in Pune teachers, contributing to her defeat.
Sena had earlier backed rebels against BJP nominees in Pune, where the allies clashed over seat-sharing.
The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won three of five seats — Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP) took Pune graduates and Aurangabad graduates, while Congress’s Abhijit Wanjarri was re-elected from Nagpur graduates after more than 41 hours of counting. He defeated BJP’s Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes. He was the lone Congress nominee to win MLC polls held on Oct 23 that covered 28 graduate and teachers’ constituencies across Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra and UP.
For Mahayuti, BJP won Pune teachers, while Shiv Sena took Amravati teachers.
“I used brains against BJP’s might,” he said. Kohale said he would appeal against the invalid votes. Abhijit Wanjarri’s victory for a second consecutive term in the RSS citadel, home turf of Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari, dealt BJP a major setback in its strongest political bastion and sharpened questions over candidate selection.
Nagpur was a prestigious seat for BJP: Gadkari represented the graduates’ constituency from 1990 to 2014.
“We will ensure we win the seat in the next polls,” he said. Chandrashekhar Bawankule, who was in charge of the campaign, accepted responsibility for the defeat.