New Delhi: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Devendra Fadnavis has won Nagpur South West assembly constituency by a margin of over 39,710 votes against Congress’s Prafulla Vinodrao Gudadhe, according to Election Commission trends.
The elections were crucial for Fadnavis, who has successfully contested the assembly polls five times from Nagpur since 1999—twice from Nagpur West and thrice from Nagpur South West.
He has won Nagpur South West consistently since its formation post delimitation in 2009. An MLA for the past 25 years, Fadnavis was also the chief minister of the state from 2014 to 2019, and again for three days in November 2019, when the BJP had attempted to form a government with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), with Ajit Pawar as the deputy chief minister.
He is hoping for a re-election from his stronghold, amidst speculations of his potential return as chief minister.
Gudadhe had lost to Fadnavis in the 2014 assembly polls by a margin of about 60,000 votes. While campaigning, Gudadhe had claimed that several factors may work in his favour this time, including the “non-availability of the incumbent MLA and development that only benefits his aides commercially”.
“I do not have much of what the BJP has. I go to people with folded hands and on my two feet to hear them out. People have seen my politics, and they have also seen Fadnavis’s politics,” he had said.
The seat is part of Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, which accounts for 62 of the 288 assembly constituencies. It is often said that the road to Mumbai’s Mantralaya goes through Vidarbha.
With the Congress and BJP locked in a direct contest in 62 out of 36 seats in Vidarbha, Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole had earlier told ThePrint: “The BJP has only hurt Vidarbha. So, the people of Vidarbha think that the Congress is the only party that can do justice to them. The situation in Vidarbha is that even Devendra Fadnavis can lose his seat.”
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
