Congress’ pain in Maharashtra is unforgettable. The party contested the elections with full force in 101 seats in the state, but this time the saffron tsunami that hit Maharashtra caused the forts of many Congress stalwarts to collapse. Congress President Nana Patole also controlled his sinking ship with great difficulty and after several setbacks in several rounds of counting, managed to win by just 208 votes.
Nana Patole, who was in the news due to his statements, contested the assembly elections from his traditional seat in Sakoli this time. Nana Patole won the legislature from this seat also in 2009 and 2019. However, when he won from this seat in 2009, he was a BJP leader. But in 2019 he left the BJP and joined the Congress.
This was his traditional seat because he had represented this area for a long time. But this time he had to face a tough fight on the seat. As he counted, Nana Patole sometimes moved forward and sometimes fell behind. After the second round, Nana Patole was ahead by 687 votes. After the fifth round, his margin was reduced and he was leading by 359 votes. After 8 rounds his lead increased to 546 votes. But he never gained a solid lead. After this, his lead was sometimes 321 votes and sometimes 469 votes and after the 16th round he fell behind by 123 votes. During this time, an impressive chill was felt in the counting center.
See the results of the Maharashtra Assembly elections here
However, after 28 rounds of counting, luck favored him and he managed to win the elections by 208 votes. Nana Patole polled 96,795 votes for this seat. While BJP’s Avinash Brahmakar, who came second, got 96,587 votes. But the real loss for Nana Patole was caused by the independent candidates from this area. The independent candidate who contested for this seat, Somdutt Brahmanand, managed to secure 18,309 votes. VBA candidate Dr Avinash got 11188 votes for this seat.
Bahujan Samaj Party’s Roshan Baburao secured 6,037 votes for this seat, while another independent candidate Ashok Sadashiv secured 3,634 votes.
Considered from the Congress point of view, due to this dispersion of votes, Nana Patole’s victory was very difficult.
Let us tell you that Mahayuti has a huge majority in Maharashtra. In this 288-member assembly, Mahayuti got 233 seats, Maha Vikas Aghadi got only 49 seats. While 6 other candidates have reached the assembly after winning.
