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Journalism of Courage
The voting turnout in Pune Lok Sabha seat showed a slight increase from the previous election but it kept the candidates on tenterhooks due to the trend of polling changing continuously in the six Assembly seats in the Lok Sabha constituency.
The Pune Lok Sabha seat comprises six Assembly segments — Vadgaonsheri, Shivajinagar, Kothrud, Parvati, Pune Cantonment and Kasba Peth. The Mahayuti has elected legislators in the five seats with four seats represented by BJP and one by Ajit Pawar-led NCP. On the other hand, the MVA has only one legislator of Congress elected from Kasba bypoll last year.
The BJP had dominated the previous two Lok Sabha elections with victory of Anil Shirole in 2014 and Girish Bapat in 2019 but it was cautious this time after the party lost its bastion of Kasba in bypoll last year to Ravindra Dhangekar of Congress who happened to be the candidate for Pune Lok Sabha seat as well. The BJP has put former mayor Murlidhar Mohol its most popular face in the city to contest the Pune seat.
The polling began at 7 in the morning and picked up till 1 pm after which it slowed down for a while before again gaining momentum at the end. In the first two hours, the BJP dominated assembly segment of Kothrud showed the maximum turnout of 7.59 percent while the Congress dominated area of Pune Cantonment with 5.69 percent had the lowest turnout. Other BJP bastion of Parvati assembly segment performed well at the beginning.
From 9 am to 11 am, Kothrud continued its good turnout with 18.2 percent but the voting in Kasba assembly segment which had voted Dhangekar to win the 2023 bypoll gained momentum and overscored Kothrud at 1 pm with 31.1 percent leaving Kothrud with 29.1 per cent behind it.
In the next two hours between 1 pm to 3 pm, the overall voting turnout slowed down and another BJP controlled Parvati with 38.1 percent jumped up the table of voting turnout of six assembly segment and was followed by Kasbapeth with 37.2 per cent.
By 5 pm, the Kasba Peth overscored all other assembly segment with a turnout of 51.07 percent followed by Kothrud with 48.91 percent. However, the voter turnout throughout the polling lagged behind in Vadgaonsheri, Shivajinagar and Pune Cantonment which was expected to stand behind Congress candidate.
In the last hour of voting, Kasbapeth continued to be the assembly segment with maximum turnout of 57.90 percent followed by Pune Cantonment with 50.52 percent. Both are considered to be stronghold of Congress. The major jump was registered in Shivajinagar and Vadgaonsheri with 49.72 percent and 49.81 percent respectively.
