Congress's Abhijit Wanjari wins Nagpur graduates' seat, defeating BJP's Sudhakar Kohale

Congress candidate Abhijit Wanjari has won the Legislative Council election from the Nagpur graduates' constituency, defeating BJP candidate Sudhakar Kohale. The result has set off discussion of new political equations in the state.

Congress had fielded 12 candidates for 28 Legislative Council seats across four states, but only one of them won. Wanjari's victory has given the party fresh strength. After the win, there is talk that the Congress hand has outdone the BJP lotus.

Notably, the win comes on a seat described as a stronghold of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In the previous election too, Wanjari had defeated the BJP candidate, Sandip Joshi.

On the count: in two rounds of first-preference counting, no candidate reached the required quota of 75,438 votes. As per the election procedure, second-preference votes were then counted. A total of 1,65,906 votes were cast in the two first-preference rounds, of which 15,032 were invalid and 1,50,874 were counted as valid.

No candidate met the quota in the second-preference count either. Wanjari, who received the most votes across the first- and second-preference counts, 67,231, was declared the winner. His closest rival, the BJP's Sudhakar Kohale, got 63,960 votes.

This is Wanjari's second consecutive win from the Nagpur graduates' seat. He had also won it in 2020. A lawyer by profession, he began his political career in student politics. Wanjari was general secretary of the Maharashtra state NSUI from 1998 to 2002 and then worked as secretary of the Maharashtra state Youth Congress.

Politics also runs in his family. His father, Govindrao Marotrao Wanjari, was twice an MLA from the South Nagpur Assembly constituency. Following his father, Abhijit also chose politics. He holds BA and LLB degrees from Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University, and has been a member of the university's Senate and Management Council.

In the results for five Legislative Council seats in Maharashtra, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won three seats and the ruling Mahayuti won two. The BJP's Kaustubh Gawade won the Pune teachers' seat. Kiran Sarnaik of the Shinde Sena won the Amravati teachers' seat. Harshada Deshmukh-Jadhav of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) faction won the Pune graduates' seat, and Dr Pratapsinh Patil of the same faction won the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar graduates' seat.