True to the predictions and projections, the city’s guardian minister and BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate Girish Bapat comfortably won the Pune Lok Sabha seat over his Congress rival Mohan Joshi.
Retaining the seat for the BJP, Bapat, at the time of going to press, had polled 6,04,687 votes. His closest rival, the Congress’ Mohan Joshi had 2,94,839 votes, with one round still left to count.
With a vote share of over 60%, Bapat maintained his lead right from the first round of counting in a total of 21 rounds.
“The results were as expected. Even before voting in the city, I was assured of my victory from the Pune Lok Sabha seat,” said Bapat while addressing the media at the FCI godowns, the venue of counting of votes for the Pune and Baramati LS seats.
Smeared with the celebratory gulal, Bapat said, “The BJP fought the elections on the agenda of development. We refrained from fighting elections on the basis of religion and caste. People have chosen development in the country bringing victory to BJP in 2019 elections.”
Bapat also commented on the sensational defeat of NCP’s Parth Pawar in his electoral debut from Maval constituency. “It was bound to happen. NCP’s defeat in Maval is a result of the dynastic politics which people have rejected,” he said.
Bapat’s victory margin of 1.5 lakh votes was rather pale as compared to the 3.5 lakh margin with which his predecessor Anil Shirole had won in 2014.
The 41,000+ votes polled by the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi candidate Anil Jadhav was one of the reasons for the defeat of the Congress candidate.
First Published:
May 24, 2019 06:04 IST
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