Pune: Counting of elections to five seats of the Maharashtra Legislative Council (MLC) is still underway on Friday. The polling for the six legislative Council seats from the three graduates’ constituencies (Aurangabad, Pune and Nagpur), two from teachers’ constituencies (Pune and Amravati) and one from the local bodies’ constituency in Dhule-Nandurbar were held on December 1. Three MLCs from the graduates' constituencies, Satish Chavan (NCP), Chandrakant Patil (BJP) and Anil Sole (BJP), and two Independent MLCs from teachers' constituencies, Dattratray Sawant and Shrikant Deshpande, retired in July.
Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) comprising of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress – contested the elections together against the BJP. Check the result update below:
Pune Padvidhar
From Pune Division Graduates' constituency, Nationalist Congress Party's Arun Ganpati Lad won the polls after he got 1,22,145 votes. He defeated BJP’s Sangram Deshmukh who managed to get 73,321 votes. Other than Lad, Deshmukh, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's (MNS) Advocate Rupali Patil Thombare contested too in the election.
Pune Division Teachers' Constituency
Jayant Dinkar Aasgavkar of Congress, Mankar Vidyanand Manikrao of MNS, and Jitendra Pawar (Independent backed by BJP) are the prime candidates in the election. As per the latest reports, Jayant Dinkar Aasgavkar of Congress is ahead of his rivals.
Dhule-Nandurbar
The BJP won the Dhule, Nandurbar local body by-polls on Thursday. BJP candidate - Amrish Patel bagged with 332 votes against MVA's Abhijit Patil, who received 98 votes. Patel left Congress in 2019 and in this year's bypolls he was in a direct battle against Congress' Abhijit Patil.
Aurangabad Division Graduates' Constituency
NCP's Chavan Satish Bhanudasrao defeated BJP’s Shirish Boralkar by 57,895 votes. Chavan received total 1,16,638 votes while Boralkar got 58,743 votes. Ramesh Pokale and Siddheshwar Munde too contested the election. Once the win was declared, the NCP office-bearers started celebrating by bursting firecrackers in several areas of the district.
Nagpur Division Graduates' Constituency
In what came as a big jolt to BJP was, the party who had command over the Amravati region for years was seen trailing. Congress’ Abhijit Wanjari secured 35,509 votes while his rival from BJP Sandip Joshi managed to bag 25,898 votes. Joshi was the former Mayor of Nagpur is close to former Chief Minister and Opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis. A total of 1,32,923 voters cast their votes for the graduate constituency in six districts of Nagpur.
Amravati Division Teachers' constituency
The second round of counting started in Amravati on Friday for teachers’ constituency. Independent candidate Kiran Saranaik was reported leading candidate with 6,088 votes in his kitty. Maha Vikas Aghadi candidate Shrikant Deshpande got 5,447 votes while another independent candidate Shekhar Bhoyar received 5205 votes. Final votes are awaited.