Satish Chavan wins M''wad Grad Constituency poll by over 57K, votes

Lokmat News Network

Aurangabad Dec 4:

Maha Vikas Aghadi candidate Satish Chavan retained Marathwada Graduates Constituency poll for the consecutive third time.

He defeated his nearest rival BJP candidate Shirish Boralkar by a margin of 57,895 votes in wee hours of Friday.

Chavan had defeated BJP candidate Shrikant Joshi first time in 2008 and Boralkar second time in 2014 as NCP candidate .

This time he was MVA candiate.

More than 3.73 lakh voters registered while 2.40 lakh of them cast their votes at 813 polling booths in eight districts of the region on December 1. There were 35 candidates in the fray including Satish Chavan and Shirish Boralkar.

The counting began at 8 am on Thursday. The administration installed 56 tables. There were five rounds and nearly 56,000 votes were counted in each round.

The first round was announced at 8.30 pm. In this round, Satish Chavan was leading by 16,292 votes.

The lead of Chavan continued from first round to final one.

A total of 57,000 votes including 1073 postal ballots were counted in the first round. Of them, 51,664 were valid votes while 5,410 were invalid. Chavan received 27,850 (600 postal ballots) while Boralkar got 11,558 (286 postal ballots). The MVA candidate was leading by 16,292.

The second round counting began at 8.30 pm and declared at 10.30 pm.

In the second round, Satish Chavan received 26,627 votes (total 54,477) while Boralkar obtained 13, 989 (total 25,547).

Satish Chavan took a lead of 28, 930 from his nearest rival Boralkar in this round.

The number of total invalid votes were 10,670 out of total counted 1,130,74 votes .

The counting for the third round started at 10.30 pm while it was declared at 1.05 am. Chavan took a lead of nearly 41,216 votes. He got 26,739 (total 81,198) while Boralkar received 14,471 (total 40,018). More than 16,000 votes were decalred invalid at the end of third round.

MVA candiate secured 26,700 votes (1,07,916 total) and BJP candidates got 14,287 (54,305) votes in the fourth round.

Chavan''s lead was double to Boralkar''s total.

In the final round, two time MLC received 8,722 (1,16,638 total) votes while Boralkar had to contend with 4,438 (58,743 total) votes.

A total of 23,093 votes were declared invalid in all the five rounds.

Election Returning officer and Divisional Commissioner Sunil Kendrekar declared Chavan as winner. With this, Chavan made a hat -trick by winning the elections for the consecutive third time since 2008.

Names of some of the other candidates with votes at the end of final round is as follow Sachin Dhavle (11,702), Nagora Panchal (8,993), Siddheshwar Munde (8,053) and Ramesh Pokle (6,712).

As soon as MVA candidate Satish Chavan took lead in the first round, the NCP activists started bursting crackers at several places in the city.

After the announcement of the first round, only few BJP leader and activists were present at the counting venue.

Election Returning officer and divisional commissioner Sunil Kendrekar had to asked the Election Officers to expedite the completion of first round. The counting began at 8 am while all votes were mixed at 2 pm. The first round of announcement was made after 12 hours (8 pm).

Sunil Kendrekark asked them had they not learnt in the training how to put figures on packets in which counted votes are kept.