After remaining silent throughout the tense interlude till the election results were declared on Saturday, Pune’s victorious Lok Sabha candidate, Suresh Kalmadi trained his guns on guardian minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar.
Mincing no words, Kalmadi said he was happy that Pawar did not campaign for him in Pune as candidates he had campaigned for had lost the election.
“It was good that Ajit Pawar did not campaign in Pune for me,” he said. Kalmadi was speaking to reporters after getting clear indications of his victory at the end of the counting of votes in the 18th round of counting.
Kalmadi said that Pawar had not carried out his responsibility as the guardian minister and sought his resignation.
The sitting MP took the lead from the first round of counting and retained it till the 21st round, barring two or three rounds when he trailed his nearest rival Anil Shirole of BJP.
Eventually, Kalmadi won by a margin of 25,701 votes. Of the total valid votes of 7,35,071, Kalmadi polled 2,79,973 while Shirole got 2,54,272.
The rivalry between Ajit Pawar and Kalmadi grew intense after the 2007 Pune Municipal Corporation election when the NCP joined hands with the BJP and Shiv Sena for the Pune Pattern and kept the Kalmadi-led Congress out of power.
