Maharashtra: BJP snatches Pandharpur seat from NCP

Giving a major jolt to the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi, the BJP has won the crucial bye-elections to the Pandharpur seat of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

BJP candidate Samadhan Autade defeated the NCP’s Bhagirath Bhalke after initially trailing. The elections in the Solapur district seat were necessitated after the death of Bhagirath's father, NCP legislator Bharat Bhalke, a three-time MLA, who died on 28 November last year after Covid-19 related complications.

The constituency includes the temple town of Pandharpur and the neighbouring tehsil of Mangalweda.

NCP’s state unit President and Maharashtra Water Resource and Command Area Development Minister Jayant Patil conceded the defeat. “Perhaps there was some lack of coordination between the units of the two tehsils,” Patil said.

Autade had lost the polls in 2019 as an Independent and the 2014 polls as a Shiv Sena candidate.

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The polls were a litmus test for the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance as well as the opposition BJP.

In fact, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar of NCP and Leader of Opposition and ex-Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, had addressed a series of rallies in Pandharpur.

With this defeat, NCP’s tally in the 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly has come down to 53 while BJP went up to 106.

Autade defeated Bhalke by a margin of 3,733 votes. While Autade polled 1,09,450 votes, Bhalke bagged 1,05,717. A total of 2,27,421 votes, including postal ballots, were counted. Polls for the Pandharpur seat had taken place on April 17 and witnessed a voter turnout of 66 per cent.

The defeat is a setback to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, the architect of the MVA.