Many a heads of nascent NCP roll; Pawar wins for fifth time

Similarly, Suryakanta Patil, Vitthal Tupe, Madhav Patil and Shankar Nam who represented Parbhani, Pune, Nasik and Dahanu parliamentary constituencies respectively in the 12th Lok Sabha lost this time around when they contested on NCP tickets.

Prafulla Patel, another close aide of Pawar, was also trailing in Chimur parliamentary constituency, when reports last came in. Patel, who switched to Chimur this time leaving his traditional stronghold Bhandara for Jagdish Nimbarte of NCP, was in the third position while Namdeo Diwathe of BJP was leading.

Suresh Varpudkar, who joined the new political outfit floated by the Maratha strongman, lost this time in Parbhani, the seat he represented in the previous Lok Sabha.

Though, the scenario was bleak for the NCP, it has managed to sent home six candidates to the 13th Lok Sabha. Barring Pawar, others are Sadashiv Mandlik (Kolhapur), Srinivas Patil (Karad), Laxman Jadhav (Satara), Nivedita Mane (Ichalkaranji) and Ashok Mohol (Khed).

The split in the Congress has helped the BJP capture the Pune Lok Sabha constituency by a wide margin though NCP wrested Baramati and Khed constituencies in the district.

BJP candidate Pradip Rawat defeated Mohan Joshi (Cong) by 41436 votes in Pune.

Vithal Tupe, who had in the last election contested on Congress ticket and defeated Suresh Kalmadi, then contesting as Independent candidate, has now been relegated to the third position when he contested on NCP ticket.

Rawat secured over three lakh votes while Joshi and Tupe secured around two lakh votes each, clearly indicating that Congress votes had been split.

Pawar has won from Baramati Lok Sabha constituency for the fifth time. He defeated his nearest rival Pratibha Lokhande of BJP by 2,98,903 votes. Pawar secured over five lakh votes while Lokhande got over two lakh votes. Ramakrishna More (Cong) secured nearly 1.5 lakh votes.

Pawar has won the election for the fifth time. He had previously won by over 1.4 lakh votes in 1984, 4.5 lakh votes in 1991, 1.6 lakh votes in 1996 and over 2.6 lakh votes in 1998. In 1984, he had contested as Congress-S candidate and in other elections as a Congress-I nominee.

In Khed constituency, which was the bastion of Congress, the NCP candidate Ashok Mohol defeated Kisanrao Bankhele of Shiv Sena by a margin of over 55,000 votes.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, Mohol who was contesting as Congress candidate, had defeated Nana Balkavde of Sena by over one lakh votes.

In Solapur, NCP and its alliance partners have made impressive gains, registering wins in seven out of a total of 13 Assembly seats in the district.

They have notched wins in Assembly constituencies of Pandharpur, Barshi, Malshiras, Mohol, Madha, Mangal-Wedha and Sangola, while Congress retained Akkalkot, South Solapur and Solapur City North Assembly constituencies, according to results available so far.