The Congress is set to face one of its biggest defeats in Nanded as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the Marathwada region. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Prataprao Chikhalikar was leading against former Chief Minister and Maharashtra Congress Committee president Ashok Chavan by a margin of 40,010 votes.
Nanded was considered Mr. Chavan’s bastion, who won the seat in 2014 by 81,455 votes. Mr. Chikhalikar, who won the Loha Assembly seat in 2014 on a Shiv Sena ticket, was formally inducted into the BJP prior to the elections. Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA) candidate Yashpal Bhinge came in third, but polled 1,62,612 votes or 14.77% of votes. Mr. Chavan was one of the only two Congress candidates in the State to win in 2014 amid a similar BJP-Sena sweep.
The other was Rajeev Satav, who won Hingoli, but did not contest this time. The Congress instead fielded Mr. Satav’s opponent in 2014, former Sena leader Subhash Wankhede. Mr. Wankhede lost to Hemant Patil of the Sena by 2,58,773 votes.
Aurangabad witnessed a three-way fight between incumbent MP Chandrakant Khaire of the Sena, sitting MLA Imtiaz Jaleel of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, and Independent candidate Harshvardhan Patil. Early trends gave sizable leads to Mr. Patil and Mr. Jaleel. However, in subsequent rounds, the battle emerged better with Mr. Jaleel leading by 4,492 votes. Mr. Patil is the son-in-law of BJP State president Raosaheb Danve and won on a Sena ticket from the Kannad Assembly seat of Aurangabad in 2014.
Mr. Danve, who is also the sitting MP from Jalna, was leading by 3,32,815 votes against Vilas Autade of the Congress, while Pritam Munde won with 1,68,368 votes from Beed. Ms. Munde had won the bypoll after her father Gopinath Munde’s death in 2014. Sena’s Omraje Nimbalkar won Osmanabad against his cousin and Ranjitsingh Patil of the Nationalist Congress Party, with 1,27,566 votes. Both candidates have previously faced each other in the 2014 Assembly polls, in which Mr. Patil won the Osmanabad Assembly seat. In Parbhani, Sena’s Sanjay Jadhav won against Rajesh Vitekar with a margin of 42,199 votes. The Marathwada region consisting of eight seats — Aurangabad, Beed, Hingoli, Jalna, Latur, Nanded, Osmanabad and Parbhani — is presently witnessing a severe drought.
