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This is an archive article published on November 24, 2024

Close shaves in Maharashtra polls: Nana Patole, Rohit Pawar and Walse-Patil save face with narrow margins

Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole was trailing in Sakoli for the better part of the counting process but beat BJP’s Avinash Brahmankar by a margin of 208 votes.

maharashtra assembly election 2024Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole (left), NCP-SP candidate Rohit Pawar (centre), and the NCP’s Dilip Walse-Patil (right). (PTI/Express Photos)

Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole, the NCP’s Dilip Walse-Patil, Mahesh Sawant of the Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) candidate Rohit Pawar were among the 10-odd candidates who won the Assembly elections by narrow margins.

However, the lowest margin of victory in the state was registered in Malegaon Central, where the AIMIM’s Mufti Mohammad Ismail Abdul Khalique retained the seat by defeating Asif Sheikh Rashid, candidate of the ISLAM party, by just 162 seats.

Patole, who was trailing for the better part of the counting process on Saturday, managed to win the Sakoli seat by a margin of just 208 votes. Postal ballots saved him the day as he defeated the BJP’s Avinash Brahmankar.

Other candidates who won by fewer than 1,000 votes include the BJP’s Manda Mhatre (margin 377 votes) in Belapur and the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Gaikwad in Buldhana (margin 841 votes).

Candidates who won by just over 1,000 votes included Sharad Pawar’s grandnephew Rohit Pawar, who won the Karjat-Jamkhed seat by 1,243 votes. He defeated the BJP’s Ram Shinde for the second consecutive time. While the NCP’s Ajit Pawar defeated another of his nephews in Baramati, the Mahayuti failed against Rohit despite going all out to defeat him. The seat is in Ahilyanagar district.

On the concluding day of the campaigning, Sharad Pawar held a rally for Rohit in Karjat-Jamkhed. Rohit had led Supriya Sule’s Lok Sabha poll campaign against Sunetra Pawar, wife of Ajit Pawar, who was at the forefront of the Mahayuti’s efforts to defeat Rohit, NCP (SP) leaders said.

The NCP’s Dilip Walse-Patil managed to defeat Devdutt Nikam of the Sharad Pawar-led party by 1,523 votes in the Ambegaon constituency of Pune district. A former Assembly speaker, Walse-Patil had won the seat for seven consecutive terms.

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Among the most riveting contests was the fight for Mahim in Mumbai, where MNS chief Raj Thackeray’s son Amit had to bite the dust on his electoral debut. He finished third as Mahesh Sawant of the Sena (UBT) beat the Shiv Sena’s Sada Sarvankar by a margin of 1,316 votes.

In Indapur, the NCP’s Dattatraya Bharne defeated Harshvardhan Patil for a third consecutive time. He had joined the NCP (SP) just before the elections after quitting the BJP. Bharne’s victory margin is 19,410 votes.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More


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