Kohle overtakes Wanjari by 4,294 votes after second count in Nagpur graduates' poll

BJP candidate Sudhakar Vitthalrao Kohle has gone ahead of Congress's Abhijit Wanjari in the Nagpur division graduates' constituency election to the Legislative Council. Official figures for the second round, released on October 28, 2026, show him with 60,924 votes against 56,630 for the sitting member, a lead of 4,294. After the first round the position had been the other way round, with Wanjari in front by 927 votes. Nobody has yet reached the quota, so the seat is still undecided.

Kohle's total is made up of 28,071 votes from the first round and 32,853 from the second. Wanjari polled 28,998 in the first round and 27,632 in the second. In the second round alone Kohle collected 5,221 votes more than Wanjari and was the biggest gainer. Independent Nitesh Karale is third on 24,249, having received 14,708 and then 9,541.

The quota fixed for the election is 75,438, which is half of the valid votes plus one. After the second round, valid votes stand at 1,50,874 and rejected votes at 15,032, making 1,65,906 in all. Kohle needs another 14,514 votes to reach the quota and Wanjari needs 18,808. Counting may therefore move to a third round, or the votes of the candidates at the bottom may be transferred again.

The other candidates' totals after two rounds are: Sanjay Thul 3,091 (1,762 and 1,329), Sumedh Gadpayale 1,096 (521 and 575), Mangesh Wankhede 1,029 (642 and 387), Atul Deshmukh 921 (576 and 345) and Dhananjay Borkar 849 (612 and 237). The figures suggest that most of the second-preference votes from Karale's supporters went to the BJP, which explains Kohle's jump. The full preference-wise transfer data would be needed to confirm the exact source of his gain.

The count began on Tuesday, October 27, at the Divisional Sports Complex in Mankapur, with 84 tables and 38 candidates in the fray. Ballots were first sorted into bundles of 25, and the real counting started at about 2 pm. Of 238 postal ballots, 34 were invalid. Of the 204 valid ones, Wanjari got 101 and Kohle 86, a lead of 15 for the Congress candidate. The remaining candidates shared the rest; one account puts their combined share at 22 and another at 17. The constituency has 2,55,603 registered voters, of whom 1,65,672 voted. Turnout was highest in Chandrapur at 73.05 per cent and lowest in Nagpur district at 60.35 per cent. Gadchiroli recorded 72.95 per cent, Gondia 71.29, Wardha 68.35 and Bhandara 67.07.

The official first-round sheet, covering 84,003 votes, put Wanjari on 28,998, Kohle on 28,071 and Karale on 14,708. Of those votes 76,875 were valid and 7,128 were rejected. The full names on the sheet are Abhijit Govindrao Wanjari, Sudhakar Vitthalrao Kohle and Nitesh Balkrishnaji Karale. Among the smaller candidates, Wankhede got 642, Borkar 612, Deshmukh 576 and Gadpayale 521. Former MLA Anil Sole, who had rebelled against the BJP and stayed on the ballot, received 99 votes. He had announced that he was stepping aside at the appeal of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and would back Kohle. One early report put the first-round figures at 28,536 for Wanjari, 27,751 for Kohle and 14,243 for Karale, but these were unofficial and are superseded by the official sheet. Another early report said Kohle led by about 4,000 after the first round, which the official numbers do not support.

The administration made no announcements during the day, and rumours filled the gap. Around 5 pm a report said Kohle was ahead by about 6,000 votes. About an hour and a half later came talk that Wanjari led by roughly 7,000, with a lead on 50 to 55 tables. A halfway-stage account also spoke of a Wanjari lead of 7,000 to 8,000. None of these matched the official sheets. Counting of the remaining 81,909 votes began around 9.30 pm and ran into early Wednesday. Kohle was said to have done well on most tables in that stage.

The seat is a matter of prestige for the BJP, which lost it to Wanjari last time. In the previous contest he polled 61,701 votes against 42,791 for the BJP's Sandip Joshi, a margin of 18,919, and the Congress took the seat for the first time since 1978. This time Fadnavis, who is from Nagpur, stayed in the city for two days and visited Sole's home to bring him back into the fold. Karale, a rebel from Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, had claimed he would get 40,000 to 45,000 first-round votes and win outright. He fell well short of that. He also objected that eight more ballot papers than expected had come out of one box and demanded fair and secure counting. There were 788 ballot boxes across 445 polling stations.

Tension rose at the counting centre around midnight, when young Congress and BJP workers shouted slogans at each other after someone made abusive remarks about Rahul Gandhi. Congress workers raised cries of "vote chori" and "Vote chor, gaddi chhod". Police separated the two groups before a scuffle broke out. In the morning some independent candidates staged a sit-in at the venue to protest against the process.

Elsewhere in the state, counting for five Council seats showed the Mahayuti ahead on three and the Maha Vikas Aghadi on two. BJP's Kaustubh Gawande led in the Pune teachers' seat and Shiv Sena's Kiran Sarnaik in Amravati. In the Marathwada graduates' seat, NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Pratapsinh Patil led over Satish Chavan of the Ajit Pawar faction. The final Nagpur result awaits further rounds.