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Pune: Barring the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) resounding victory in the Dhule-Nandurbar Local Authorities constituency by-election, the ruling tripartite ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has had the upper hand in four of the five, teachers’ and graduate constituencies in the Legislative Council polls for which counting of votes was still in progress at the time of going to the press on Thursday.
The BJP’s candidate for Dhule-Nandurbar, Amrish Patel, won a thumping victory, polling 332 out of total 434 votes cast. His nearest rival, the Congress’ Abhijeet Patil, could secure only 98 votes, while four votes were cast invalid.
The Dhule-Nandurbar by-poll was necessitated after Patel, a sitting Congress MLC quit the party and joined the BJP.
“Patel’s resounding win is a big political setback for the MVA and underlines the tensions between the NCP and the Congress. We (BJP) are certain to sweep the teacher’s and graduate constituencies as well,” exclaimed senior BJP leader and former Minister Girish Mahajan.
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While the counting for the five graduates’ and teachers’ constituency seats – of whom three are graduate and the remaining teachers’ constituencies – is currently underway, the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA has secured a clear lead in four of these seats.
However, notwithstanding Mahajan’s tall claims MVA’s Jayant Asgaonkar (Congress) has secured a comfortable lead of 4,000 votes over his BJP rival in the Pune Teacher’s constituency.
Likewise, in the hotly contested Pune graduate constituency, NCP candidate and sugar baron Arun Lad has secured a huge lead of 10,000 votes over his nearest rival, the BJP’s Sangram Deshmukh.
Interestingly, the Sangli-based Lad, who is the president of the Kranti Co-operative Sugar Factory, was responsible for the NCP’s defeat in the last Pune graduate constituency election when he raised the banner of rebellion.
The seat, traditionally an NCP bastion, became a ‘prestige fight’ with senior NCP leader Jayant Patil, who is the current Water Resources Minister and BJP State President Chandrakant Patil, who till recently held the Pune Graduate seat, both campaigning vigorously for their party’s respective candidates.
In the Nagpur graduate constituency seat, the MVA’s Abhijeet Wanjarri had secured a lead of nearly 5,000 votes over his BJP rival Sandip Joshi.
In the Aurangabad graduate constituency seat, the NCP’s Satish Chavan has secured a massive lead of over 17,000 votes against his BJP adversary Satish Boralkar and appears to be coasting to victory.
In the Amravati Teacher’s constituency, an Independent Kiran Sarnaik has secured a slender lead of less than 1,000 votes over the MVA candidate and sitting Shiv Sena MLC Shrikant Deshpande.
