The Raj Thackeray-led MNS opened its account in Pune winning one assembly seat out of eight in the city and making a strong presence in two constituencies known to be bastions of the Saffron alliance comprising Shiv Sena-BJP.
Ramesh Wanjle of MNS defeated his NCP rival Vilas Dangat in Khadakwasla by over 30,000 votes to register the first win for his party but two other MNS candidates, although ending up as losers, sprung a surprise by polling number two votes in the Yuti strongholds of Kasaba peth and Kothrud.
In Kasaba peth, it was widely expected that Rohit Tilak of Congress, supposedly named by Rahul Gandhi as a representative of the youth brigade, would give a tough fight to the sitting BJP MLA Girish Bapat.
However, it was MNS' Ravi Dhangekar who surpassed Tilak and came second pushing him to the third place. Bapat managed to retain the seat with a modest margin of around 8,000 votes.
A similar story was repeated in Kothrud constituency where Kishore Shinde of MNS gave neck-and-neck fight to the Shiv Sena candidate Chandrakant Mokate, former deputy mayor, to finish second and making light of the challenge posed by former MP and NCP candidate Anna Joshi who had left BJP on the eve of the election.
