Maharashtra Gram Panchayat, both ruling BJP-Shinde Sena and opposition MVA claim ‘victory’ in elections

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Mumbai: Claims and counter-claims are flying thick and fast over the results to the Maharashtra Gram Panchayat (GP) polls held across 17 districts, with both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) and the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) parties claiming victory in the State’s rural hinterland.

In the results to over 580 Gram Panchayats which were announced late Monday, the Maharashtra BJP led by Devendra Fadnavis claimed that the BJP had won 259 sarpanch seats while their ally, the Sena faction led by Chief Minister won on 40 seats taking the coalition tally to 299.

As Fadnavis celebrated the BJP-Sena faction’s victory as a good omen for future polls, he said that the results only proved that the public have whole-heartedly accepted Eknath Shinde as the Chief Minister since the fall of the MVA government.

Chief Minister Shinde said the results were a strong indication that people had accepted the change of government that had taken place in the State.

However, given the fact that the elections to the post of sarpanch (village headman) are not contested on any party symbol, the MVA parties – the Congress, the Nationalist Congress party (NCP) and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction – each in their own way have claimed that the BJP has won only 144 while the NCP bagged 126, the Congress 62 and the Thackeray Sena won 37 making the MVA coalition the ‘winner’ of the contest.

Maharashtra Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly and senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar pointed out that unless a sarpanch gave it in writing to which party he supports, no political party could sweepingly claim that they had won the Gram Panchayat polls.

The senior NCP leader remarked, “The point is any side can claim anything. If the BJP-Shinde camp is saying they have won 300 seats, I, too, can claim I have won 400.”

Meanwhile, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) president Nana Patole on Tuesday claimed that 175 sarpanch seats had been won by the Congress alone and alleged that Devendra Fadnavis was ‘falsifying’ figures.

However, as per sources, while the BJP had certainly gained the upper edge in the polls, the NCP, too, had performed creditably particularly in Pune district and parts of western Maharashtra. The Congress, it appears, had come a distant third.

This was the first direct elections for the sarpanch’s post, being held after the Shinde-Fadnavis government introduced direct polls for the Sarpanch post and passed a law in the Legislative Assembly which was opposed by the MVA.