Congress's Abhijit Wanjari wins Nagpur graduates' seat, BJP's Sudhakar Kohle loses

Congress candidate Abhijit Wanjari established a winning lead on Wednesday night in the Legislative Council election for the Nagpur graduates' constituency. BJP candidate Sudhakar Kohle was defeated. Nagpur is the home city of the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The BJP has been in power in the country for the past 12 years and in Maharashtra for 10 years, which made Wednesday a heavy day for the party.

The impact of Kohle's defeat will not be confined to Nagpur or the Maharashtra BJP. It will also rankle with the party's national leaders for a long time.

The defeat is also being linked to the Congress's "zero" episode. Polling was held on October 23 for 29 Legislative Council seats in four states. Results began coming in on Tuesday, and by Wednesday night most seats had been declared. Prime Minister Narendra Modi questioned the Congress's performance in these results. He tweeted asking how many seats the Congress would have got if the elections had been held on ballot papers. The tweet went viral and the Congress's zero tally travelled far. Congress leaders too were hurt by the zero. As soon as news came on Wednesday night that Wanjari had taken a winning lead in Nagpur, talk of the party's zero tag ended.

State Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal said the Prime Minister was in too much of a hurry to prove the Congress a zero. According to him, the BJP's condition in a city visited by the RSS as well as leaders such as Nitin Gadkari and Devendra Fadnavis showed that the public had broken the arrogance of money power and political power. Sapkal said the Maha Vikas Aghadi had won three graduates' seats in Maharashtra, and this reflected a change among young people. He also said that besides Nagpur, Modi could not save even his own Varanasi seat. In Bihar, the BJP lost badly in Patna City too, and in Yogi Adityanath's Gorakhpur it barely escaped defeat, he said. Sapkal said Modi should have written all this in his tweet as well.

Wanjari's win has energised Congress workers, while the BJP camp is despondent. Rank-and-file workers are calling it the failure of the so-called Chanakyas. They believe that even during the Assembly elections, when there was a wave in the party's favour, it lost two seats in the city. One of them was West Nagpur, where Kohle himself was the candidate and lost to sitting MLA Vikas Thakre. Since then it had been said that the party might back a new face in the Legislative Council election.

As soon as Kohle's name was announced, former mayor Anil Sole rebelled openly. The party knew this could cause heavy damage. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis therefore visited Sole at his home and persuaded him. Sole agreed, but the cadre was not very happy. After the party's defeat on Wednesday, one worker said off the record that the Almighty's stick makes no sound.