Straight fight likely between MVA, BJP candidates in M’wada Grad Constituency polls

Aurangabad, Nov 30:

There appears to be a straight fight between Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate Satish Chavan and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Shirish Boralkar in the Marathwada Graduate Constituency election. The election will be held from 8 am to 5 pm on December 1. There are 35 candidates in the fray while over 3.73 lakh voters will decide their fate at 813. Chavan had won the election twice.

First time, he defeated Shrikant Joshi of BJP in 2008 and second time Shirish Boralkar in 2014. Political experts feel that there is some resentment against him, but, he has the support of three coalitions partners-Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress. His supporter said that Chavan is the candidate of the ruling coalition and have the support of leaders and activists of three top parties.

“This will be the first test of MVA in the election. Big guns like Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has addressed a public meeting online while local-level leaders of three parties did canvassing in each district together,” they added. BJP leaders said that Shirish Boralkar is a senior leader who has experience of last time elections and have the support of many teachers organisations.“Different leaders of BJP Former Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, BJP State Unit president Chandrakant Patil have done campaigning for the Boralkar at different places in the region. The BJP has organised network of party leaders and activists,” they asserted.

They feel that it is also important as to how independent candidates like Ramesh Pokle and Sanjay Tayde Patil eat votes. The leaders of both candidates made claims and counter-claims in meetings and on social media.

NCP- Congress alliance candidate Satish Chavan had retained the seat, by defeating BJP-Shiv Sena candidate by over 15,000 votes in the election to the state Legislative Council in 2014. Chavan defeated his nearest rival Shirish Boralkar of the BJP.

In 2008 elections, there was a close contest between the BJP’s the then sitting MLC Shrikant Joshi and Satish Chavan. Congress-NCP candidate had won the seat by a narrow margin of 3,453 votes. Chavan had received 55,324 votes of first priority while Joshi got 51,781 votes. Renukadas Vaidya of Shiv Sena obtained 14,394 votes, Jagannath Patil of Congress got 3,486 votes and Prof Vitthal More of Teachers’ Association got 18,592 votes.