Khadakwasla gets saffron hue

While counting was on at Shivajinagar godown,it was Nationalist Congress Party candidate who made his presence felt early in the day. She led for almost six rounds only to leave after 11 am,when the BJP candidate started taking the lead.

From the seventh round where Tapkir took the lead with 1,410 votes as against Wanjale’s 836 votes saw a lot of excitement among the saffron party persons. With this it was BJP members who came to the forefront and they continued to make their presence felt in large numbers with the rounds thereafter,seeing their leader fairing a lead over Wanjale. By the 20th round,though Tapkir fell back in the twenty first round,but the considerable lead almost became the decisive factor for Tapkir to win the elections.

In the 20th round,the lead achieved by Tapkir was nearly 9,669 votes. BJP-Sena-RPI members made their presence in huge numbers with each passing round.

With city BJP president Vikas Matkari among the first to arrive,followed by MLA Chandrakant Mokate,MLA Girish Bapat and Sena leader Neelam Gorhe and RPI city head Parshuram Wadekar reaching the godown with their candidate doing well. MLA Girish Bapat said that the alliance was celebrating it’s first victory after joining with the RPI,although he felt that the polling could have been better. “Low polling is a concern ahead of civic polls. Though our candidate has won the elections,he could have had a better lead,”said Bapat.

Deputy Returning Officer Vijaya Pangarkar said that counting started on time and was completed in the 27 rounds as was announced. The very first round saw Wanjale take a lead of 3877 votes ahead of Tapkir who polled only 1121 votes. There was enough excitement in the air as the rounds progressed and by 10.30 am Tapkir took the lead in the eighth round. Even as the average polling of votes saw Wanjale in the lead by 2443 votes in the tenth round,the sudden dip in votes for Wanjale saw her fall back by 1026 votes. This continued till the twentieth round where she continued to trail behind by almost 9000 votes almost swinging the election towards the BJP’s side.

With plenty of exit polls declaring that low polling will turn out to be in favour of BJP candidate,the alliance was vocal about NCP’s stance of cashing in on Ramesh Wanjale’s widow ‘sympathy votes’ not going in her favour. BJP MLA Bapat even described it as the victory of ‘maha-yuti’ to be a trend setter for the future of all elections especially the civic polls. There were 27 rounds for the total of 1,18,661 votes polled which is a low 33 per cent of the total electorate which comprises 3,62,822 voters. Incidentally,Khadakwasla assembly constituency had polled 49 per cent in the 2009 assembly election and 35 per cent for the Lok Sabha elections. Rural population polled better than the city counterparts. Of the 1,18,864 voters,there were 51,863 female voters and 67,001 male voters who polled for the bypoll. With this win,the saffron alliance presently has five MLA’s. With eight assembly constituencies in Pune city – the alliance has Kothrud (Sena),Parvati (BJP),Kasba Peth (BJP),Hadapsar (Sena) and now Khadakwasla while Congress has two MLA’s from Shivajinagar and Pune Cantonment while Wadgaon Sheri is the only one which has a NCP candidate. Of these Vadgaonsheri,Shivajinagar,Kothrud,Parvati,Pune Cantonment and Kasba Peth come under Pune Lok Sabha constituency while Khadakwasla assembly constituency is with Baramati Lok Sabha seat and the Hadapsar assembly constituency is under Shirur.

Anna factor

BJP candidates in their speech continued to praise the Anna factor which helped in their campaign although team Anna did not campaign for jan lokpal bill in this constituency. They were more interested in Hisar bypolls.However all the BJP candidates gave credit to the Anna campaign against the ruling UPA rule the result in their favour. There were 27 rounds with eight candidates in the fray. Besides Tapkir and Wanjale,the other candidates were Amol Krishna Chavan,Anand Ganpat Dhende,Dashrath Nana Raut,Vishnu Digambar Garud,Gaikwad Maruti Bapu and Bhagwat Kamble.