Voting on Nagpur Graduates seat set for October 23, Congress-BJP fight expected

The election atmosphere is set to heat up for the Nagpur Graduates constituency of the Maharashtra Legislative Council. The Election Commission has released the schedule for the biennial elections to five vacant seats in the state. Voting will take place on October 23 from 8 am to 4 pm, while counting of votes and results will come on October 27.

Of the five seats going to polls, three are graduates' constituencies and two are teachers' constituencies. Political attention will particularly be on the Nagpur Graduates seat, as both Congress and BJP have stepped up preparations for this election.

According to the election schedule, the notification will be issued on September 29. The last date for filing nominations is October 6, scrutiny will take place on October 7, and candidates can withdraw their nominations until October 9. The entire electoral process is to be completed by October 31.

The Nagpur Graduates seat carries considerable political significance. The constituency, which covers Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli, was held by the BJP and, before it, the Jana Sangh for nearly 58 years, until Congress candidate Abhijit Wanjari broke that run in 2020.

In the 2020 election, Wanjari defeated BJP candidate Sandeep Joshi by 18,910 votes. According to the official results issued by Maharashtra's Chief Electoral Officer, Wanjari received 61,701 votes, while Joshi got 42,791 votes.

That result ended the BJP's long dominance on this seat. The seat had earlier been held by senior leaders such as Gangadharrao Fadnavis and Nitin Gadkari.

The 2026 election brings a fresh contest, with the BJP trying to win back the seat and Congress trying to retain it.

The BJP has stepped up its voter registration campaign to reclaim the seat. Former MLA Sudhakar Kohले and former MLC Anil Sole are being discussed within the party as possible candidates.

Congress, on the other hand, is preparing to field sitting MLC Abhijit Wanjari again. His candidacy for the Nagpur Graduates seat is reported to have received the party's backing.

A third angle has also entered the contest, with Teachers Bharti declaring engineer Atul Deshmukh as its candidate.

As parties activate their organisational machinery for voter registration, the Nagpur Graduates election is set to become a talking point across the entire Vidarbha region.

The five vacant seats also include Satish Bhanudas Chavan from the Aurangabad Graduates constituency, Arun Ganpatrao Lad from the Pune Graduates constituency, Abhijit Govindrao Wanjari from the Nagpur Graduates constituency, Kiran Ramrao Sarnaik from the Amravati Teachers constituency, and Jayant Dinkar Asgaonkar from the Pune Teachers constituency.

The 2020 results give a sense of the political weight of the three graduates' seats. In the Nagpur contest, Wanjari received 61,701 votes, more than the winning quota of 60,747 votes required, while BJP's Joshi got 42,791 votes.

As per the election calendar, the schedule is: notification on September 29, last date for nominations October 6, scrutiny October 7, last date for withdrawal of nominations October 9, voting on October 23 from 8 am to 4 pm, and counting and results on October 27.

With this announcement, the electoral machinery has become fully active. The Nagpur Graduates seat is once again set for a high-profile contest between Congress and BJP, at a time when the BJP is trying to reclaim a seat it lost after decades of dominance.