Congress MLC Asgaonkar loses Pune teachers' seat; Sawant alleges money and pressure used in poll

Results for the Pune teachers' constituency seat of the Legislative Council have begun to come in, and the election is throwing up a major political upset. Congress's sitting MLA Jayant Asgaonkar has suffered a crushing defeat. He was knocked out of the race during the counting of second-preference votes. The result has cleared the way for the win of BJP-backed Kaustubh Gawde.

Dattatray Sawant, the RaSaP candidate, had slipped to third place after the first few rounds. Coming out of the counting centre after the result, he claimed that money had been used on a large scale in the election.

Speaking to the media after his defeat, Sawant said the second and third candidates were paying Rs 5,000 and Rs 7,000 for votes. According to him, the buying of votes with money happened openly in this constituency. Sawant said that, going by the figures he had learnt of, there were 62,000 voters in all. He said it was being claimed that one candidate's party distributed money to 52,000 teachers and one candidate paid 42,000 teachers.

Sawant said the teachers themselves did not take the money, but people went to their homes and left money there. He said he was fully convinced of this. Sawant said the voting was got done by showering money and that he held this to be 100 per cent true, because the state's teacher is highly intellectual. According to him, this issue had never come up before, and political parties used not to interfere in this election. This time, Sawant said, political parties made a determined attempt to hijack the election and chose the wrong path to do so.

Asked to name those who distributed the money, Sawant said there was no need to name anyone. He said he had been brought up with good values and was a teacher, so he would not name names. He claimed that the parties that entered the contest with a political role also brought their elected representatives, meaning MLAs and MPs, even from other states, and stationed them in 58 tehsils. According to Sawant, they kept pressuring teachers for 15 days by visiting their homes and obstructing their every task. Sawant said people from all the parties involved spread huge amounts of money and tried to get votes.

Sawant also claimed that teachers were put under pressure. He said teachers are not directly government servants but employees of institutions. Hence, Sawant claimed, teachers were pressured through the fear of pressure on the institution and trouble for the school. He said the pressure was not applied by the institutions; it was applied on the institutions. This left the institutions helpless, and their employees finally had to go the wrong way.

Sawant said he had no CCTV footage, but that if any 10 teachers were spoken to, some of them would say so plainly. According to him, people went to homes and left money at the doorstep. He admitted that what became of the money left at the door was something "we do not go looking into", but called it unfortunate. Sawant said that, looking at past history, voting never used to happen like this. As a teacher who sees all this every day, he said, his clear view is that this voting took place under pressure and was got done through the wrong means.

Sawant said he would file a complaint with the commission, "100 per cent". He also accepted his defeat. In his words, democracy is not there for refusing to accept defeat, and this is the election process, in which votes came in and their numbers were declared. He said he was ready to face the defeat. Sawant said all his fellow teachers would continue to do their core work honestly, and that, as an organisation, looking after the interests of students and teachers is their job, which they will keep doing.