Congress's Wanjari wins Nagpur graduates' seat as Karale's second preferences undo BJP's Kohale

Congress candidate Abhijit Wanjari has won the Nagpur division graduates' constituency of the Maharashtra Legislative Council, beating the BJP's Sudhakar Kohale after a count that stretched over about two days. Kohale is reported to have conceded. The decisive push came from the second preferences of independent Nitesh Karale, known as Karale Guruji, a rebel of Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party.

Counting began on Tuesday, 27 October, at the Divisional Sports Complex in Mankapur, with 84 tables in use. Ballots were first sorted into bundles of 25, and the main count started around 2 pm. Postal ballots went first: of 238, 34 were invalid, leaving 204 valid. Wanjari had 101, Kohale 86 and the other candidates 17 between them. The seat had 2,55,603 registered voters and 1,65,672 of them voted. Turnout was highest in Chandrapur at 73.05 per cent, followed by Gadchiroli (72.95), Gondia (71.29), Wardha (68.35) and Bhandara (67.07). Nagpur district was lowest at 60.35 per cent. In all, 788 ballot boxes from 445 polling stations yielded 1,65,705 papers, which with the postal votes meant 1,65,909 to be counted.

Trends through the day swung about. Reports of a Kohale lead of about 6,000 did the rounds in the evening, and later talk was of Wanjari ahead by 7,000 to 8,000 at the halfway stage. No official figure was released during the count. Karale had claimed he would poll 40,000 to 45,000 first-preference votes and win in the first round. The BJP's own survey had put him near 15,000.

The official first-round sheet covered 84,003 votes, 76,875 valid and 7,128 invalid. Wanjari had 28,998, Kohale 28,071 and Karale 14,708, so the Congress candidate led by 927. Sanjay Thul got 1,762, Mangesh Wankhede 642, Dhananjay Borkar 612, Atul Deshmukh 576 and Sumedh Gadpayale 521. The remaining 81,909 votes were taken up from about 9.30 pm and counting ran into Wednesday morning.

After two rounds, Kohale had 60,924 against Wanjari's 56,630, a lead of 4,294, while Karale stood third on 24,249. Valid votes totalled 1,50,874, with 15,032 rejected, which set the quota at 75,438. Neither man was close: Kohale needed 14,514 more and Wanjari 18,808. Thul had 3,091 by then, Gadpayale 1,096, Wankhede 1,029, Deshmukh 921 and Borkar 849. Since nobody met the quota, elimination began and second preferences were counted. Early in that exercise, the sample showed Kohale with 56 votes, Wanjari 63 and Karale 48. At a later stage, with 28 candidates out, Kohale was on 61,029 and Wanjari on 56,785.

The votes of former MLA Anil Sole, who rebelled against the BJP, were also distributed. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had gone to Sole's house on 12 October and persuaded him to step aside and back Kohale, but his name stayed on the ballot. He drew 274 votes, counting 267 first preferences and 7 postal ballots. Of their second preferences, Kohale got 88, Wanjari 41 and Karale 10.

In the closing stage Kohale's lead reached nearly 5,000. Once the second preferences of the last three candidates were counted, it fell to about 1,200, with some 14,000 votes linked to Karale still to be opened. Those voters leaned heavily towards Wanjari, who erased the deficit and went ahead for good. One account has Kohale leading by about 4,700 just before the turn.

Tension marked the venue throughout. Around midnight, young Congress and BJP workers faced off and shouted slogans at each other, and police moved them apart. Witnesses said it began with abusive remarks about Rahul Gandhi, which drew cries of "vote chori" from Congress workers. Workers of both parties also gathered on the main road outside Mankapur Stadium and were cleared by police. Some independent candidates staged a sit-in over the process. Karale objected that eight more ballot papers than expected had come out of one box. Amid it all, BJP MLA Praveen Datke called out to Wanjari at the centre and the two embraced. As the result neared, Congress workers began celebrating early and police were deployed in strength.

Before the result, Kohale said many votes had been wrongly declared invalid and asked for them to be rechecked, adding that he would go to court if the result went wrong. After the result, it was claimed that more than 3,000 ballots carried a '2' against Kohale's name but no first preference. That claim has not been officially confirmed, and the invalid-vote figures await explanation from the election officials.

Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal said his party had beaten the BJP for a second straight time in the city that houses the RSS headquarters and is home turf to both the Chief Minister and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. He said the Maha Vikas Aghadi took three of the five Council seats, and that the BJP lost despite its money and machinery. He also said the Prime Minister had written off Congress as a "zero" before the result. "In the end, the balloon of illusion has burst," Sapkal said.

The loss stings the BJP. Wanjari took the seat in 2020, beating Sandip Joshi by 18,919 votes (61,701 to 42,791), and it was Congress's first win there since 1978. The BJP fielded Kohale despite grumbling in its ranks, after denying Sole a ticket last time. Fadnavis camped in Nagpur for two days and met educational, social and professional bodies, and Gadkari and Chandrashekhar Bawankule campaigned too. The party had hoped higher turnout would carry Kohale on first preferences. Debate on candidate choice and internal unity is now expected to grow.

Elsewhere in the same round of counting, the BJP's Kaustubh Gawande led in the Pune teachers' seat and Shinde Sena's Kiran Sarnaik in Amravati. In the Marathwada graduates' seat, the NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Pratapsinh Patil led Satish Chavan of the Ajit Pawar faction.