BJP and Congress were held in a deadlock for over 40 hours by the ballot boxes of Nagpur. In an outcome that did not favor the party in power, the verdict was announced on Thursday, October 29.
Abhijeet Wanjari of Congress won the seat of Nagpur Division Graduates' from where he defeated BJP's candidate Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes. Wanjari got 67,231 votes, while Kohale received 63,960.
According to NewsX, the winning margin was of 2,500 votes. The 3,271 votes of ETV Bharat have been mentioned here, as they gave the number of votes each received.
The seat is politically charged. The BJP has lost in the native place of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who campaigned extensively for Kohale.
Nagpur is the native place of RSS. As reported by NewsX, the outcome will dominate political discussion in Maharashtra for the next few days.
An important point dispels an initial misconception. Some media reported that Congress had stolen the seat of Nagpur from the BJP. Actually, this seat belonged to Congress already. According to ETV Bharat, Wanjari was an incumbent MLC who was able to keep this seat.
Wanjari won it some years ago. Back then, this was a significant blow to the BJP, since the party had been holding it for 58 years. The victory in 2026 ensured this success, and the BJP could not reclaim it.
The result kept going back and forth. During the first vote for the preference, Wanjari was leading. However, in the second vote counting, he was still attracting more votes than Kohale.
In another report, it had been said that the BJP was ahead at a certain point in time. In the second counting, Kohale was ahead by 4,294 votes.
All five seats were contested on 23rd October. Maha Vikas Aghadi secured three out of the five seats. BJP fought in three but could secure only one, while its ally Shiv Sena fought in two and won one.
Kiran Sarnaik of Shiv Sena won the Amravati Teachers' constituency, whereas Kaustubh Gawade of BJP won the Pune Teachers' constituency. There was no information regarding the other two seats won by MVA.
Congress acted quickly. The Congress unit released a screenshot of a deleted tweet from Fadnavis stating that "Congress scored a big fat zero" in the elections. The authenticity of this incident is based on Congress’s own screenshot.
The Congress leader in the state Harshwardhan Sapkal claimed that the BJP candidate had lost the seat of Nagpur where the RSS office is located.
It amounts to more of a symbolic defeat rather than a transfer of power since the BJP still retains its status as the majority party in the 78-member Legislative Council, where it enjoys the support of 35 members.
In any case, the BJP has been performing well in recent times. In the January municipal polls, the BJP secured 1,425 out of 2,869 total seats in 29 municipal corporations. At Nagpur, which has 151 members, the BJP won 102 seats and Congress 34.
Nevertheless, it comes as a surprise because graduates and teachers are a separate electorate.
Mahayuti secured 235 out of 288 seats in the state assembly elections held in 2024. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the MVA had won 31 out of 48 seats. The political scenario of the state has dramatically shifted in both directions in just two years.
The opposition will make out that educated voters are turning away from the government alliance. On the other hand, the BJP will maintain that these are low-voter seats wherein the candidate carries the maximum weight.
