Shiv Sena defeats Congress to retain Palghar Assembly seat

Ruling alliance partner Shiv Sena today retained the Palghar Assembly seat as its candidate Amit Ghoda defeated his nearest Congress rival Rajendra Gavit by a margin of 18,948 votes in the keenly fought by-election.

The BJP did not contest the bypoll.

Ghoda secured 67,129 votes, while Gavit got 48,181 votes in by-election, necessitated due to the demise of Ghoda's father and sitting Shiv Sena MLA Krishna A Ghoda on May 24 last year, following a heart attack.

The other candidates in the fray were former Sena leader Manisha Nimkar, who contested on the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi ticket this time and secured 36,781 votes, Chandrakant Vartha, of the CPI-M, who bagged 4,865 votes and Bahujan Mukti Party's Dileep A Dumada got 1,417 votes.

A total 3,162 people chose None of the Above option, while the total number of votes polled was 1,61,535.

Out of the total 2.47 lakh electorate, 65.24% had cast their vote during the bypoll held on February 13.

The polling percentage in the bye-election came down, as in the 2014 Assembly elections it stood at 68.8%.

In the 2014 assembly elections, BJP's Dr Premchand T Gond had secured 34,149 votes and came third.

Krishna Ghoda had won the seat on Shiv Sena ticket in October 2014, defeating Gavit (Congress) by a margin of just 526 votes.

Gavit had later challenged the election result in court. However, in the intervening period, Ghoda passed away, which necessitated the by-election.

Krishna Ghoda had joined the Sena prior to the Assembly elections in 2014.

Before that, he was twice MLA from Congress and once represented the NCP. He had lost the 2009 Assembly election.