In close fights, winners benefitted from division of votes

Mumbai: The Mahayuti alliance – comprising BJP, Shiv Sena, NCP and other smaller parties – registered a thumping victory in the assembly poll results declared on Saturday. Most candidates of the alliance who emerged victorious received a clear mandate from voters, but some sitting MLAs and ministers struggled to retain their seats and won by slender margins. In fact, at least 13 would-be legislators belonging to both the Mahayuti and the opposition Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance won by less than 2,000 votes, indicating a very close fight.
The lowest margin of victory across all constituencies in the state was in Malegaon central, where the sitting MLA from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Mohammad Khalique, managed to retain his seat by just 162 votes. Khalique polled 109,653 while his closet rival Shaikh Aasif Shaikh Rashid – a Congress turncoat who contestested under the banner of his own party, the Indian Secular Largest Assembly of Maharashtra (ISLAM) – received 109,491 votes. Shaikh Aasif was elected as the MLA in 2014 but lost to Khalique in 2019. He left the Congress in 2022 and joined the NCP briefly before deciding to float his own party during the split in the NCP last year. The Congress candidate in Malegaon central, Ejaz Baig, received 7,527 votes – it is likely that this division of opposition votes saved the AIMIM MLA Khalique from defeat.
The second lowest victory margin of 208 votes was recorded in Sakoli, where state Congress president Nana Patole, a chief ministerial aspirant in the MVA, defeated the BJP’s Avinash Brahmankar. Patole received 96,795 votes against Brahmankar’s 96,587 votes. Patole’s slender margin of victory was due to the division of secular votes as the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) candidate polled 11,188 votes and independent candidate Somdatta Karanjekar polled 18,309 votes.
The third lowest victory margin of 377 votes was recorded in Belapur, where two-time BJP MLA Manda Mhatre contested against former minister and BJP leader Ganesh Naik’s son Sandeep Naik, who contested on an NCP (SP) ticket. Mhatre polled 91,852 votes while Naik polled 91,475 votes. Mhatre had defeated Ganesh Naik in Belapur in 2019 by just 1,491 votes. To settle scores, his son Sandeep Naik resigned from the BJP before the polls and joined the NCP (SP). But combined efforts by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP and chief minister Eknath Shinde saved her from defeat. She also benefitted from the division in opposition votes as independent candidate Vijay Nahata polled 19,646 votes and VBA candidate Sunil Bhole polled 2,833 votes.
In Mahim, the constituency where Shiv Sena was founded and where Shiv Sena Bhavan is located, Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Mahesh Sawant defeated the sitting Shiv Sena MLA Sada Sarvankar by 1,316 votes. Sawant benefitted from the division of Mahayuti votes as MNS candidate Amit Thackeray, son of MNS chief Raj Thackeray, polled 33,062 votes.
In Ambegaon in Pune district, veteran NCP leader and co-operation minister Dilip Walse-Patil managed to retain his seat by just 1,523 votes. Though Walse-Patil has an undefeated track record in the Ambegaon constituency since 1990, this election was tough as his erstwhile mentor in politics and NCP founder Sharad Pawar urged people to voters. Walse-Patil polled 106,888 votes while NCP (SP) candidate Devedatta Nikam polled 105,365 votes. Walse-Patil managed to win because another candidate named Devdatta Nikam, whose poll symbol was similar to that of NCP (SP), polled 2,965 votes.