@vivekbhavsar
Mumbai: The results of the biennial elections to the Maharashtra Legislative Council from the Nagpur local authority constituency however were expected as the Congress faced a shortfall of around 80 voters. The results were in a way more important for former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis than for his former cabinet colleague Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the winning Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate.
Bawankule is not a big mass leader from Other Backward Classes (OBC) community, but is influential in the Teli community in some districts of Eastern Vidarbha. It may be recalled that he was denied a party ticket in the 2019 state assembly polls. This resulted in a serious electoral setback for the BJP in Vidarbha as it lost almost 12 assembly seats dominated by the Teli community.
Though the reason for denying the ticket to Bawankule was non-political, Fadnavis was held responsible for it. Bawankule is known to be from the Nitin Gadkari camp. He however, nurtured the assembly constituency without relying on Gadkari and Fadnavis for any external help.
It is said that Bawankule had facilitated a lot of road construction works to those close to him and from his community within Nagpur, Bhandara and Gondia districts. These contractors and their close aides were so influential that they played a key role in the 2019 assembly polls after Bawankule was denied a ticket. Ultimately, the BJP lost 12 seats which affected BJP which fell short in forming the government in 2019.
Had Bawankule lost this MLC election, again Fadnavis would have been held responsible for his defeat and his image with the Central leadership of the party would have been badly affected.
That is why, Fadnavis had stayed put in Nagpur and prepared a poll strategy and dispatched corporators to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in two separate groups, an insider informed the thenews21.
“Fadnavis met most of the corporators of the BJP, some of the Shiv Sena and Congress corporators in person, took away the mobile phones from the corporators to ensure that nobody from the opposition could contact them,” claimed the insider.
The strategy proved successful and after a 2 years’ gap, Bawankule now enters the state legislature as a member of the Upper House.
Bawankule’s comeback will be for forever,” the reaction of Devendra Fadnavis has indicated much more between the lines as he spoke. Fadnavis faced the camera after all leaders of the party including state president Chandrakant Patil and Bawankule spoke to the media.
Meanwhile, Chandrashekhar Bawankule of the Bharatiya Janata Party defeated Congress’ Mangesh Deshmukh of Congress by a margin of 176 votes. Bawankule managed to poll 362 votes as against 186 by Mangesh Deshmukh.
Deshmukh was declared as the official candidate of the Congress a day before the poll day. Earlier, Dr Ravindra Bhoyar, a rebel from the BJP was the candidate of the Congress.
Bawankule secured additional votes of Congress and a few votes of Shiv Sena corporators. However, nobody from Sena refuted these claims.
