After the counting came to an end, the BJP said it had won 3,190 seats along with CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena that won 842 seats
The ruling BJP on Tuesday claimed a “historic” victory in gram panchayat elections in Maharashtra, the results of which were declared earlier in the day. The party won 2,348 out of 7,751 gram panchayats, where polling was held on December 18. After the counting came to an end, the party said it had won 3,190 seats along with chief minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena that won 842 seats.
The NCP performed the best out of all three Maha Vikas Aghadi allies, winning 1,287 seats. The Congress got 809 seats, while Uddhav Thackeray’s Sena won 637 seats. The total number of seats won by the MVA allies is 2,733.
This was the first local body polls conducted after the alliance government led by Eknath Shinde came to power in June.
Earlier, all the political parties made claims of victory even though the elections were not contested as per party affiliations. While citing trends, the BJP had claimed to have won over 3,500 seats, while Shinde’s Sena had more than 1,000 seats. The Congress had dismissed the claim as “false propaganda” and said the highest number of more than 900 sarpanches were elected from the grand old party alone. A leader from Uddhav’s Sena had said a large number of sarpanches (village heads) from their faction were being elected.
State BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule had termed the poll outcome a “historic” win for the party, which he said showed that rural Maharashtra trusted the Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis government. “The entire state is getting saffronised. It is a historic win for the BJP,” he told reporters in Nagpur.
State Congress chief Nana Patole, however, had accused the BJP of indulging in false propaganda about the election results. “The highest number of more than 900 sarpanches were elected from the Congress alone and the number of sarpanch seats won by the MVA is far more than the BJP,” he said.
Leader of opposition in the legislative council and Shiv Sena leader from the Uddhav faction, Ambadas Danve said a large number of sarpanches from his faction were being elected.
The Maharashtra State Election Commission (MSEC), however, said as the elections were contested by panels (comprising groups of candidates irrespective of political affiliations), the commission does not provide data suggesting the number of villages or seats won by any particular party.
After the results were declared, incidents of clashes were reported from Aurangabad and other parts of the state. In Jalgaon district in north Maharashtra, the brother of a winning candidate in Jamner taluka died of a cardiac arrest amid stone pelting between two local factions of the BJP, police said.
“One Dhanraj Mali, the brother of the winning candidate in Takli Kurd village, was present when stone pelting started. He felt unconscious and died due to cardiac arrest. There were no injury marks on his body,” said M Rajkumar, Superintendent of Police, Jalgaon district.
