Poll results may widen rift in Maharashtra govt

The results of elections to the six seats of the recent local self-government institute constituencies will widen the rift between the two major partners of the ruling Democratic Front (DF) government in the state, as Congress and NCP have lost one seat each.

While the Congress and NCP won two seats each, one seat went to a Congress rebel and the BJP. However, Nationalist Congress managed to snatch Kokan seat from Shiv Sena.

The battle for Kokan seat had became prestigious for State Revenue Minister Narayan Rane, who wanted to avenge the defeat of his supporter in the recently held by-election to the Shriwardhan Assembly constituency.

However, news is not so good for NCP and Congress from Vidarbh region. In Vidarbh region's Amravati constituency, where majority of the municipal corporations, councils and zilla parshidas are dominated by the Congress-NCP combine,

BJP's Jagdish Gupta defeated Congress candidate Milind Chimote.

In the neighbouring Wardha constituency, Congress rebel candidate Saifuddin Nazli defeated NCP candidate Ram Tadas. The other candidates who won the election include Bhaskar Jadhav (NCP-Kokan), Vasant Pawar (Nashik), chief minister's younger brother Dilip Deshmukh (Latur) and Suresh Deshmukh (Parbhani).

Reacting to the defeat of NCP's official candidate in Wardha constituency, NCP's state unit president Arun Gujrathi said, "We gave our complete co-operation to the Congress, but our alliance partner didn't returned the gesture". The Congress did not react on today's results.