Firebrand Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Rupali Thombre-Patil has lost in both the seats she contested in the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) elections.
Thombre had contested from the ‘A’ seat of Ward No. 25 (Shaniwar Peth–Mahatma Phule Mandai) and the ‘B’ seat of Ward No. 26 (Ghorpadi Peth–Guruwar Peth–Samatabhoomi). In Ward No. 25, she was defeated by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Swapnali Pandit, while in Ward No. 26, she lost to BJP’s Sneha Malwade.
Earlier in the day, Thombre had objected to the counting of votes. She forced election officials to halt the process after alleging that the EVM numbers provided earlier did not match those being used during the counting. In a video that went viral, she was seen climbing a fence at the vote-counting centre, while police personnel intervened to stop her.
Meanwhile, polling took place on Thursday in Pune for 163 seats, as two BJP candidates, Manjusha Nagpure and Shrikant Jagtap from Ward No. 35, were already elected unopposed.
Ranjan Kumar Sharma, Joint Commissioner of Police, said that overall polling in Pune on Thursday was peaceful, barring seven to eight complaints of money distribution and chaos at some polling booths over claims of bogus voting.
Poll officials said that 26 control units and 76 ballot units were replaced following technical glitches. The CUs and BUs were replaced swiftly and the polling process continued, they added.
