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Maharashtra poll results: Independents no match in Pune district, many lose deposits

Except for one independent candidate, who came close to giving a fright to candidates from the main parties, others turned out to be just addition to the candidates' lists.

Maharashtra poll results: Independents no match in Pune district, many lose deposits In the three seats of Pimpri-Chinchwad, of the 41 independent candidates who were in the fray, 35 lost their deposits. (Source: AP/File/Representational photo)

In the closely contested battle of supremacy between the two main political parties — BJP and NCP — in Pune district in the recently concluded Assembly elections, independent candidates were virtually blown away.

Except for one independent candidate, who came close to giving a fright to candidates from the main parties, others turned out to be just addition to the candidates’ lists.

In Baramati assembly seat, which was won by senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar by a record margin of 1,65,000 votes, all other candidates, including BJP’s Gopichand Padalkar, lost their deposits. Pawar’s victory margin was the highest in the state elections this year. Padalkar, who managed just 30,282 votes, had to face major embarrassment as the BJP had its eye on wresting the seat. Interestingly, 1,517 voters opted for NOTA, which polled more votes than six independent candidates, including Sachin Agwane (248), Bapu Bhise (313), Rahul Thorat (361), Dada Thorat (284), Vinod Chandgude (355) and Madhukar M (1,316).

In the three seats of Pimpri-Chinchwad, of the 41 independent candidates who were in the fray, 35 lost their deposits. Of the three seats, the NCP did not field official candidates in two and instead backed independent candidates, both of whom lost. While independent candidate Vilas Lande — sponsored by the NCP — lost by a massive margin of 77,000 votes in Bhosari seat to BJP’s Mahesh Landge, another NCP-backed independent candidate Rahul Kalate gave Laxman Jagtap of BJP a real scare in Chinchwad seat.

Kalate was among the four independent candidates in the state who secured more than one lakh votes and the only one to lose. He polled 1,12,994 votes. “I wish I had contested on an NCP ticket, the result would have been different. The party had offered me a ticket,” Kalate said.

In Chinchwad seat, 5,868 NOTA votes were more than that polled by nine independent candidates, seven of whom secured less than 500 votes.

In Kothrud seat, NOTA’s 4,023 votes were much more than those polled by VBA’s Deepak Shamdire (2,424 votes) and AAP’s Dr Abhijit More (1,379 votes). Here, six independents secured less than 500 votes.

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In Shivajinagar seats, eight independent candidates secured less than 500 votes while one polled 800 votes.

In Kasba Peth seat, only one independent candidate Vishal Dhanwade (13,967 votes) fared better than NOTA (2,382 votes).

In Pune Cantonment seat, of the 29 candidates, 26 lost their deposits including eight who polled less than 100 votes.

In Hadapasar seat, NOTA’s 2,500 votes were better than nine independents. In Vadgaonsheri seat, NOTA’s 2,400 votes beat nine independents.

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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