BJP and NCP win one Lok Sabha seat each in Maharashtra

Mumbai:The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the prestige seat of Palghar near Mumbai against the Shiv Sena but lost the other important constituency of Bhandara-Gondiya to the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) by a massive 48,097 votes in the Lok Sabha byelections in Maharashtra. Both seats were won by the BJP in the 2014 election by substantial margins.

While the Palghar victory saved the blushes for the BJP and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the loss of Bhandara-Gondiya in the BJP bastion of Vidarbha is a major setback for Fadnavis and Union minister for road transport and shipping Nitin Gadkari.

In Palghar, where the bypoll was necessitated by the death of BJP member of Parliament (MP) Chintaman Wanga in January, BJP nominee Rajendra Gavit, who got 272,780 votes, defeated his Shiv Sena rival, Wanga’s son Shriniwas, by 29,574 votes.

Bahujan Vikas Aaghadi (BVA) candidate Baliram Jadhav polled 222,887 votes. In the 2014 election when the Palghar constituency saw 62.90% voting, Chintaman Wanga had polled 533,201 votes to Jadhav’s 293,681.

In Bhandara-Gondiya, the NCP’s Madhukar Kukde easily defeated the BJP’s Hemant Patle by 48,097 votes. In 2014, BJP candidate Nana Patole, who last year quit the BJP and joined the Congress, won, polling 606,129 votes against the NCP’s Praful Patel who got 456,875 votes.

In 2014, the BJP nominee had polled little more than 50% of the total votes cast. At the last count on Thursday, the NCP nominee had polled more than 434,000 votes against the BJP candidate’s 386,000. The bypoll saw a turnout of 51% on 28 May as against more than 72% in 2014.

The bypoll results in Maharashtra are significant in terms of the 2019 elections and in the context of the anti-BJP coalition taking shape across the country.

In both Bhandara-Gondiya and Palghar, the BJP faced not only a Congress-NCP alliance but also a disgruntled ally Shiv Sena, which is still a constituent in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray later raised doubts over the “fairness” of the BJP victory in Palghar, saying his party “narrowly lost out” because of “BJP malpractices and a pliant election commission”.

The Congress and NCP had declared a pre-poll alliance for both the seats.