Twenty-four hours after counting began for five Maharashtra legislative council seats for which polling was held on October 23, the ruling Mahayuti alliance on Wednesday morning is leading in three constituencies, and the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is ahead in two.
Of the five seats that went to the polls, the BJP leads in the Pune teachers’ and Nagpur graduates constituencies, while the Shiv Sena leads in the Amravati teachers constituency. The Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) leads in Pune graduates and Aurangabad graduates constituencies.
Counting, which started late on Tuesday, is still ongoing because the legislative council elections were conducted using paper ballots.
In Nagpur graduates’ constituency, BJP candidate Sudhakar Kohale overtook his Congress rival, Abhijit Wanjari, who was leading the first round. But as counting progressed, Kohale secured 60,921 votes at 8am. He led Wanjari by over 4,000 votes, with Wanjari in second place with 56,630 votes and independent candidate Nitesh Karale with 24,249 votes.
In the Amravati teachers’ constituency, Shiv Sena candidate Kiran Sarnaik polled 8,575 votes and is ahead of the Congress’s Aditi Pohare by 4,752 votes despite the presence of Shiv Sena rebel candidate Shrikant Deshpande in the fray, who is currently third with 4,732 votes.
In the Aurangabad graduates’ constituency, NCP (SP) candidate Pratapsingh Patil has widened his lead over NCP candidate Satish Chavan to 23,360 votes. Patil secured 78,540 votes against Chavan’s 55,180. Independent candidate Raviraj Sable is third with 20,470 votes, followed by Dilip Ghuge of Shiv Sena-UBT with 8,366 votes.
In the Pune graduates’ constituency, 2,26,224 votes were declared valid, setting the majority quota at 1,13,113. In the Pune teachers’ constituency, 51,511 votes were valid, and 1,675 were declared invalid, fixing the majority mark at 25,756.
In the Pune teachers’ constituency, BJP candidate Kaustubh Gawade is ahead on first-preference votes, followed by independent candidate Sachin Sanap, who is backed by the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and Dattatreya Sawant, supported by the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha.
The Pune graduates’ constituency is witnessing a close contest between NCP-SP candidate Harshada Deshmukh (NCP-SP) and Mahayuti-backed Smita Jadhav, with Deshmukh leading on first-preference votes.
An election officer said the final outcome in the five constituencies was expected to take at least 3-4 hours.
A total of 1.06 million graduate and teacher voters were eligible to vote across 2,419 polling stations in the five constituencies. Turnout was highest in the Amravati teachers’ constituency at 91.08%, followed by Pune teachers’ at 85.87%. The Nagpur graduates’ constituency recorded 64.76% turnout, Pune graduates’ 62.78% and Aurangabad graduates’ 58.67%.