NCP pockets larger share of alliance seats in Pune

The rural voters in Pune district, which has witnessed political domination of the Sharad Pawar family for decades, expectedly favoured the Congress-NCP alliance which won 11 out of the total 21 assembly seats while the saffron camp captured four out of the eight city segments, showing an upper hand among urbanites.

The NCP which has a strong base in Pune rural---which includes the home turf of Baramati for the Pawars---claimed the larger share of the alliance seats with a tally of seven in the district out of which just one came from the city assembly segment of Vadgaon-Sheri.

Among the top performers for NCP were two of its ministers including  Ajit Pawar, nephew of the NCP president retained the Baramati seat for the fifth time with a margin of over one lakh votes.

His performance was matched by another NCP minister in the district Dilip Valse Patil, who held finance portfolio, who too made it to the state assembly winning the prestigious Ambegaon seat for the fifth consecutive term, defeating Kalpana Adhalrao Patil, wife of the sitting Shiv Sena MP Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil.

One more minister whose fate was decided in the district was Harshawardhan Patil of Congress whose contest against an NCP rebel Datta Bharne in Indapur constituency had attracted state-wide attention.    

Patil, who had earlier headed a group of independent MLAs supporting the Congress-NCP Democratic Front (DF) government before officially joining Congress on the eve of this election, managed to keep the seat with a narrow margin of 7,960 votes.

For the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, the fourth consecutive victory of sitting BJP MLA Girish Bapat from Kasaba constituency came as a booster as the contest had generated lot of interest with Congress fielding Rohit Tilak, a direct descendant of Lokmanya Tilak, to cash in on a predominantly Brahmin vote bank of the saffron camp.

Interestingly, the MNS factor took its toll on Congress as Rohit Tilak, who supposedly enjoyed blessings of Rahul Gandhi as a representative of the party 'Young Brigade', was pushed to number three with the MNS candidate Ravindra Dhangekar coming second polling over 46,000 votes.

The Saffron alliance got six seats (three each to Shiv Sena and BJP) in the district out of which four came from city segments of Kasaba, Kothrud, Hadapsar and Parvati. While Congress-NCP shared three seats in city, one went to debutant MNS where its candidate Ramesh Wanjale humbed his NCP rival.

The senior BJP leader and former MP Anna Joshi who crossed over to NCP to become its candidate on the eve of elections, came a poor fourth in Kothrud constituency from where Shiv Sena's Chandrakant Mokate, former deputy mayor romped home.        

A highlight of the Pune district results was the victory of three NCP rebels who defied the party to contest against official Congress-NCP alliance candidtes from Daund, Chinchwad and Bhosari.

For Congress, the defeat of its former minister Balasaheb Shivarkar, considered close to Union minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, came as a big blow as he lost the Hadapsar seat to Mahadev Babar of Shiv Sena.

Three sitting MLAs in the district--- Sharad Dhamale, Balasaheb Shivarkar and Baburao Pacharne-- suffered defeat in the election from Bhor, Hadapsar and Shirur constituencies.

While MNS which contested 12 seats in the district made its presence felt bagging the Khadakwasla seat and polling number two votes in two assembly segments in the city, the BSP drew a blank in all the 21 constituencies it fought in the district.