Congress's Abhijit Wanjari retains Nagpur graduates' seat, beats BJP's Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes

Congress candidate Abhijit Wanjari has won the Nagpur division graduates' constituency of the Maharashtra Legislative Council for a second straight term. He defeated the BJP's Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes after a count that stretched over 41 hours and swung back and forth. The result was announced on October 29. Returning officer and Divisional Commissioner Vijayalakshmi Bidari handed him the certificate of victory.

Adding first and second preferences, Wanjari ended with 67,231 votes and Kohale with 63,960. Independent Nitesh Karale, known as Karale Guruji, a rebel of the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party, was third. Reports give his final tally as 25,908 or 25,909. No candidate reached the quota of 75,438, so the result was decided by adding the two preference tallies.

Counting began at 8 am on Tuesday, October 27, at the Divisional Sports Complex in Mankapur, on 84 tables. Election observer Dr Harshdeep Kamble, the assistant returning officers and the district collectors were present. The Election Commission announced the schedule on September 22 and issued the notification on September 29. Polling was on October 23, from 8 am to 4 pm, and the Commission had set October 31 as the date for finishing the whole process.

The constituency has 2,55,603 registered voters, of whom 1,65,672 voted. Turnout was highest in Chandrapur at 73.05 per cent, followed by Gadchiroli at 72.95, Gondia at 71.29, Wardha at 68.35 and Bhandara at 67.07. Nagpur district was lowest at 60.35 per cent. In all, 38 candidates were in the fray. The ballot papers came from 788 boxes at 445 polling stations.

Counting started with 238 postal ballots, of which 34 were rejected. Of the 204 valid ones, Wanjari got 101, Kohale 86 and the rest 17, giving Wanjari a 15-vote lead. Ballots were then sorted into bundles of 25, and the main count began at about 2 pm, with 1,000 papers handled at each table. An early unofficial figure from the first round put Wanjari on 28,536, Kohale on 27,751 and Karale on 14,243. Those numbers were later superseded.

The official first-round sheet covered 84,003 votes, of which 76,875 were valid and 7,128 invalid. It put Wanjari on 28,998, Kohale on 28,071 and Karale on 14,708, a lead of 927 for the Congress candidate. Sanjay Thul had 1,762, Mangesh Wankhede 642, Dhananjay Borkar 612, Atul Deshmukh 576 and Sumedh Gadpayale 521. Former MLA Anil Sole, who had stepped aside at the Chief Minister's request, was reported to have 99 votes in the first-round count. His final first-preference total was later given as 267, plus 7 postal votes.

Midway through, Wanjari was reported to be ahead by 7,000 to 8,000 votes, and rumours flew on social media in both directions. The remaining 81,909 votes were taken up from about 9.30 pm and the count ran into early Wednesday. Kohale did well in this stretch. After two rounds, 1,65,906 votes had been counted, of which 1,50,874 were valid and 15,032 invalid. Kohale stood at 60,924 and Wanjari at 56,630, a lead of about 4,294 votes, though some reports gave it as 4,291. Karale had 24,249. Kohale needed 14,514 more votes to reach the quota and Wanjari 18,808.

With no one at the quota, elimination began. After 28 candidates were out, Kohale had 61,029 and Wanjari 56,785, a gap of 4,244. Sole's 274 votes were examined for second preferences: 88 went to Kohale, 41 to Wanjari and 10 to Karale. When 30 candidates had been dealt with, Kohale's lead was close to 5,000. It then dropped to about 1,200, with around 14,000 votes linked to Karale still to be counted. That is where the contest turned. Counting of second preferences on Karale's ballots began on Wednesday night and went heavily to Wanjari, and Congress workers started to celebrate. Police were deployed at the venue after slogans against the BJP raised the temperature. Late on Tuesday night, workers of the two parties had also faced off, shouting slogans, and police moved them apart.

Kohale did not concede at once. He said: "Congress has started celebrating, but we have not conceded. The 36th elimination round is under way. Up to this round I am ahead by 3,000 votes. About nine thousand BJP votes were eliminated. That is why we fell behind. To those BJP voters who wrote '2' instead of '1' against my name in the order of preference, my appeal is that such voting is not good for democracy. We will not concede until the entire count is over." He later said only that senior party leaders would analyse the defeat, and left the counting centre. Earlier he had asked for invalid votes to be rechecked and said he would go to court if the result came out wrongly.

The invalid votes remain a point of dispute. Some reports say about 9,000 BJP-leaning ballots were voided because the number 2 was written against Kohale's name. One report said that more than 3,000 ballots carried a 2 against his name with no first preference marked, and that this was not officially confirmed. The official figure so far is 15,032 invalid votes.

Karale said: "On our ballot paper, Abhijit Wanjari gets the maximum votes. Abhijit Wanjari should not take the credit himself. There was anger among people against the BJP, so the number two vote was given to Abhijit Wanjari. The BJP did not ask for the number two vote, and that proved fatal for them." He also said Assembly and Lok Sabha elections should be held on ballot paper. Earlier he had claimed he would get 40,000 to 45,000 first-round votes and objected that eight extra ballot papers had come out of one box.

Wanjari, born on May 10, 1973, is a lawyer who began in student politics. He is the son of the late Govindrao Wanjari, a Congress leader and two-time South Nagpur MLA. He holds BA and LLB degrees from Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University and has served on its Senate and Management Council. He was NSUI general secretary for Maharashtra from 1998 to 2002 and later held posts in the Youth Congress and the Nagpur District Congress Committee. He contested the 2005 South Nagpur by-election and the 2014 East Nagpur Assembly election. He first won this seat in 2020, beating the BJP's Sandip Joshi by 61,701 votes to 42,791, the first Congress win here since 1978.

The BJP had treated the seat as a prestige contest. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis stayed in Nagpur for two days and visited Sole's house to win him over. Nitin Gadkari and Chandrashekhar Bawankule also campaigned. Commentary inside the BJP points to complacency in booths it considered safe, discontent over the choice of Kohale, and too much stress on first preferences. State Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal said the Maha Vikas Aghadi had won three of the five Council seats on offer. He said the result showed that the public had broken the arrogance of money and power, and took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "zero" remark about the Congress.