Impressive win for Vikhe-Patil in Shirdi, Pachpute upset

BJP won five of the 12 Assembly constituencies in Ahmednagar, while the Congress and NCP won three each. One seat went to the Shiv Sena.

In the scramble for tickets, defections had soared ahead of polls. In Ahmednagar, the most prominent was former tribal affairs minister Babanrao Pachpute who left the NCP to contest as a BJP candidate from Shrigonda.

In a close contest, NCP candidate Rahul Jagtap who bagged 99,281 votes defeated Pachpute who could got 85,644 votes.
At Kopergaon, NCP leader Shankarrao Kolhe’s daughter-in-law Snehalata, who contested as the BJP candidate, won by 29,270 votes over the Shiv Sena candidate Ashutosh, who is MLA Ashok Kale’s son.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had held a massive rally in Rahuri, where BJP MLA Shivajirao Kardile won comfortably.
Kardile polled 91,454 votes against Dr Usha Prasad Tanpure of Shiv Sena whose got 65,778 votes. NCP leader and former rural development minister Jayant Patil’s brother-in-law Prasad Tanpure had not got the NCP ticket and the family had fielded Patil’s sister and Prasad’s wife Usha as Shiv Sena candidate.

The contest was close in Nevasa where Congress leader Balasaheb Murkute fought on a BJP ticket to defeat NCP MLA Shankarrao Gadakh by a thin margin of 4,659 votes.

NCP’s Rajeev Rajale, who had lost the Lok Sabha elections this year to BJP’s Dilip Gandhi, fielded his wife Monica on a BJP ticket from Shevgaon-Pathardi constituency. She won by 53,185 votes.

Former tribal affairs minister Madhukar Pichad of the NCP, whose son Vaibhav contested from Akole, won polling 67,696 votes. The region is a sugar-belt where the Congress-NCP have a grip over sugar cooperatives. The win in Shirdi and Sangamner, where Congress MLAs Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil and Balasaheb Thorat reign supreme, is an indication that the Modi factor did not work at all places, says Girish Kulkarni, a political observer from Ahmednagar.