In a close contest, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Suresh Dhas won the Osmanabad-Latur-Beed Legislative Council seat, defeating the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)’s candidate by a mere 74 votes.
Mr. Dhas, formerly with the NCP, won 526 votes to beat Ashok Jagdale (the NCP-backed candidate), who secured 452 votes.
The bitterly contested seat was a prestige battle between BJP leader and Maharashtra Rural Development Minister Pankaja Munde and her estranged cousin, NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.
Mr. Dhas’ victory was unexpected as the arithmetic was against him. The seat had 1,006 votes, with the NCP and Congress winning 527 votes, the BJP winning 321 votes, and the Shiv Sena 64 and independents winning 94 votes. Yet, he managed to secure loyalty votes from corporators and municipal councillors from his erstwhile party to come out on top.
The contest to this seat became lively owing to a series of twists and turns before polling. On May 2, it appeared that Ms. Munde had been dealt a blow after Ramesh Karad, her close aide, defected to the NCP. The move was engineered by NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.
Mr. Karad, who was immediately given a nomination by the NCP the same day, swiftly withdrew it on April 7, amid chaos and confusion in the NCP camp. Caught napping by Mr. Karad’s turnaround, the NCP was left with no choice but to back Mr. Jagdale, an independent candidate.
According to election watchers, Mr. Karad’s ‘Trojan Horse act’ swung the vote for the BJP, despite the odds stacked against Mr. Dhas.
The result to this MLC seat, which went to the polls along with five other constituencies on May 21, was deferred by the Election Commission following legal wrangles in the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court.
An ongoing court case over the disqualification of 10 corporators from Beed municipal council and the disqualification of two corporators from the Shirur Kasar municipal council (in Beed) delayed the result.
Corporators in civic corporations, municipal councillors, zilla parishad and panchayat samiti members are among those eligible to vote in the biennial elections to the Legislative Council.
