Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: NCP (SP) candidate Pratap singh Patil, who defeated rival NCP’s sitting MLC Satish Chavan in the Maharashtra Legislative Council polls, said on Thursday that voters express their discontent when they feel they are being taken for granted.
He said angry voters even left chits inside ballot boxes to send a message, claiming that one of them read “Satish (Chavan), bro, it is done now”.
Patil defeated Chavan by 18,124 votes in the Aurangabad Graduates’ Constituency election, with the result declared after a prolonged counting process. Although none of the candidates secured the quota of 88,558 votes, Patil emerged as the winner with the highest number of votes at 85,876. Chavan secured 67,752 votes after the counting of second-preference votes, an official release said.
Independent candidate Ravindra Sable Patil secured 19,897 votes, while Dilip Ghuge of the Shiv Sena (UBT) polled 8,489 votes, failing to cross the 10,000-vote mark, it said.
Speaking to reporters after his victory, Pratapsinh Patil said voters express their discontent when they feel they are being taken for granted.
“I thank the graduates and MVA leaders who fought this election with full strength. After my candidature was announced, I had just 12-15 days to campaign. I visited 76 talukas and presented my vision for the next six years. The voters therefore voted for me. I had earlier said that when voters are taken for granted, they simply wait for the next voting date,” Patil said.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the NCP(SP), Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT), and their leaders worked wholeheartedly, he said.
MLA Abdul Sattar of the Shiv Sena, led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, had openly backed Patil despite his party deciding to support Chavan.
Asked about the support, Patil said, “In a democracy, if a candidate has the ability to work for the constituency and someone supports that candidate, it should be welcomed. This will definitely strengthen democracy. An ‘invisible power’ helped me a lot because the voters were taken for granted.”
Patil claimed that voters had expressed their anger through messages left in the ballot box. Asked about these messages, he said, “There are many chits, but I cannot say much about them here. One chit read, ‘Satish (Chavan), bro, it is done now; the game is over.’”
Asked about a Sena (UBT) candidate in the fray despite being NCP (SP) and the Uddhav Thackeray-led party being MVA partners, Patil described it as a friendly fight, saying senior leaders had tried until the last moment to find a solution but failed.
“From day one, however, there was a photograph of Uddhav Thackeray on our posters and in our manifesto. The graduates saw the merit and voted accordingly. My margin would have been bigger had the votes not been divided,” he said.
The Mahayuti allies, the BJP and Shiv Sena, won one seat each in the five Maharashtra Legislative Council constituencies, while the MVA bagged the remaining three, including Nagpur, where the contest went down to the wire.
Polling for the Pune Graduates’, Nagpur Graduates’, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Graduates’, Pune Teachers’ and Amravati Teachers’ constituencies took place on October 23, recording a voter turnout of 72.96 per cent, as per officials. The results were declared on October 28-29.
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