NCP chief Sharad Pawar's grandnephew Rohit Pawar on Thursday emerged victorious in his first electoral state election as the Nationalist Congress Party posted better than expected results in the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections. Rohit Pawar who was contesting from Karjat Jamkhed assembly constituency in Ahmednagar won the election by 43,347 votes against BJP's Prof. Ram Shankar Shinde.
While Pawar polled 1,35,824 votes, the BJP candidate received 92,477 votes.
As the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had pitched Rohit Pawar, the grandson of Sharad Pawar's elder brother Appasaheb Pawar, it believed that there would be a 'surprising result' this time.
Rohit, 33, started his electoral career in 2017 by contesting the Zila Parishad elections from the Pawar hometown of Baramati and won.
He belongs to the third generation of the Pawar family and has been pitched against BJP leader and incumbent MLA Ram Shinde, who is also the Water Conversation Minister. The seat has been a BJP stronghold and the party has been winning it for the last 25 years.
While the BJP built its campaign against Rohit on the theme of outsider versus insider, the latter focused on how there has been no development in the constituency in spite of having Ram Shinde as the minister.
Over the last six months, Rohit has been visiting the constituency and reaching out to the voters to discuss the issues faced by them.
Counting for the Maharashtra assembly elections has commenced. Polling for all 288 constituencies took place on October 21.
A voter turnout of 60.46% was recorded in Maharashtra. Total voters in Maharashtra are 8,98,39,600 - 4,28,43,635 women and 4,68,75,750 men - who were eligible to cast their votes on October 21 to elect 288 new members of the new assembly.
Almost all exit polls have predicted a BJP-Shiv Sena alliance win in the 13th Maharashtra assembly elections.
BJP contested the state polls in an alliance - Mahayuti - with Shiv Sena and some other smaller allies. The saffron alliance is projected to get close to 200 seats in the 288-member assembly.
