The Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) led by Prakash Ambedkar played a spoiler for the alliance of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Pune. There were three seats which witnessed fierce competition and winners were decided with very narrow winning margins. These seats were Shivaji Nagar, Pune Cantonment and Khadakwasla.
Though, the VBA was not able to win from any of these, they were able to scuttle victory plans of the Congress-NCP combine. This is because of the fact that the VBA polled more votes in all three seats which turned out to be greater than the margins of the winning candidates.
For example, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the seats of Pune Cantonment and Shivaji Nagar by a margin of just 5,000 votes, whereas the VBA candidates accrued more than 10,000 votes each in both the constituencies. The margin was even narrower in Khadakwasla where BJP won by a mere 2,595 votes with VBA nominee securing 5,951 votes.
People who know Pune’s politics are of the view that the VBA indirectly helped BJP in these three constituencies.
