NAGPUR: The ruling Bhartiya Janata Party won the Amravati division Graduate’s constituency for Maharashtra Legislative Council on Monday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party candidate and the Minister of State for Home in the Devendra Fadnavis government Ranjeet Patil defeated his nearest rival Sanjay Khodke of the Congress by 43,897 votes, according to the District Information Officer of Amravati.
The polling for this Graduate constituency was held on February 3. This election had become a prestigious for the BJP because of the candidature of Mr. Patil.
Mr. Patil polled 78,051 votes and Mr. Khodke could garner 34,154 votes at the end of the final round of counting.
BJP accused of fraud
Meanwhile, more than 30 candidates of the Shiv Sena in Nagpur could not file their nominations from their party due to “server error” in submitting the mandatory AB form.
All these candidates filed their nominations as Independents but the lack of official Shiv Sena symbol may create problems for the candidates as they will have to go to the voters with a new symbol.
The Nagpur district president of Shiv Sena Sanjay Harde has accused the ruling BJP playing dirty to “making sure that the Shiv Sena candidates don’t submit AB forms”.
“I suspect that the ruling party has something to do with this because when our candidates went to submit their forms, the officials said the server was down. The server was never back to normal until the deadline for the submission of the forms was over. You know whose government it is,” Mr. Harde told The Hindu.
Another Shiv Sena leader, who spoke to The Hindu on the condition of anonymity, said the confusion over AB forms could cost the party eight to nine seats.
