Headlines
Battle of prestige in Bandra East, Tasgaon assembly bypolls
Mumbai/Sangli, April 11
Electoral fights of
prestige got under way as voting for by-elections in Bandra East and
Tasgaon-Kavthemahankal assembly constituencies started peacefully here
on Saturday.
The voting started amid tight security in both
constituencies with long queues of early voters witnessed outside
different polling stations.
The elections were necessitated by
the deaths of sitting Bandra East legislator Bala Sawant, senior Shiv
Sena leader, and Tasgaon-Kavthemahankal legislator R.R. Patil, former
deputy chief minister of Nationalist Congress Party.
For the
Bandra East seat, the Congress has nominated its heavyweight leader and
former chief minister Narayan Rane who has locked horns with Shiv Sena's
Trupti Sawant, widow of the former sitting legislator Bala Sawant and
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM)'s Raja Rehbar Khan.
The
seat is crucial for the Shiv Sena as it is the home bastion of the
party's founder-patriarch, late Bal Thackeray, who lived and worked from
his home Matoshree in Bandra East.
For the Congress, the seat
could see a revival of its virtually decimated fortunes in the state
after successive routs in last year's Lok Sabha and Assembly elections,
and mark a comeback for Rane who too was swept away in the anti-Congress
wave from his home constituency in Sindhudurg in the October 2014
assembly polls.
However, Congress apprehends that the presence of
the formidable AIMIM candidate could split the 'secular votes' in the
constituency - which also has a substantial Muslim population - to
benefit Shiv Sena.
In Tasgaon-Kavthemahankal, former deputy chief
minister R.R. Patil's widow Suman R. Patil is in the fray with the
support of all major state parties, but a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
rebel Swapnil Patil has curdled the local political atmosphere.
A
total of 266,000 voters shall exercise their franchise at 264 polling
stations in Bandra East, a purely urban constituency with slums,
skyscrapers and glittering business areas.
Around 269,000 voters
shall cast their votes in 285 polling stations in
Tasgaon-Kavthemahankal, a rural constituency nurtured for decades by the
late R.R. Patil who died in February 2015.
The counting will be taken up April 15 and results also be announced the same day.