The voters of Marathwada gave their mandate against the Mahayuti. Out of the eight Lok Sabha constituencies in Marathwada, Maha Vikas Aghadi managed to win seven seats and Mahayuti had to be contended only with one seat and that too of Shiv Sena candidate Sandipan Bhumre from Aurangabad Lok Sabha seat.
Bhumre garnered a total of 476,130 votes, securing notable victories in various segments such as Aurangabad Central with 85,937 votes, Aurangabad West with 95,586 votes, and Gangapur with 94,419 votes. Conversely, Jaleel amassed 341,480 votes, demonstrating considerable support in areas like Aurangabad East with 89,143 votes, Kannad with 42,338 votes, and Vaijapur with 56,207 votes.
Direct fight between Bhumre and Jaleel
The counting in the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar took around 14 hours. Bhumre maintained the lead from the early stage. It was expected that there will be a direct fight between sitting MP and AIMIM candidate Imtiaz Jaleel and former MP and Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Chandrakant Khaire. However, the fight took place between Jaleel and Bhumre. Bhumre secured 4,65,130 votes while Jaleel got 3,41,480 and Khaire remained on third position with 2,93,450 votes.
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District returning officer and district collector Dilip Swami gave the certificate to Bhumre. Union Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Karad, housing minister Atul Save, MLA Sanjay Shirsath, Rajendra Janjal and other leaders were present.
2019 polls
The voters of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar had showed the adverse trend than the voters of the entire Marathwada region, where the mandate was in favour of MVA. Khaire faced a major setback, as he was confident about his victory and he also spoke about it to the media persons.
In 2019, MP Jaleel won over the consolidation of the Muslim and Dalit votes due to the alliance of AIMIM and Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. Khaire had lost the election. After that Shiv Sena was divided and Shiv Sena (Shinde) fielded Bhumre while Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate was Khaire. Most of the local leaders including MLA Sanjay Shirsath, MLA Pradeep Jaiswal and others from Shiv Sena were with Shinde faction and knew all the election strategies of Khaire as they had worked together in the past.
Analysing Mahayuti's performance
Meanwhile, in Marathwada, the Congress won all three seats it contested, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) won three of the four seats where it fielded its candidates. Marathwada comprises eight seats - Nanded, Parbhani, Hingoli, Osmanabad, Latur, Aurangabad, Jalna and Beed. On Tuesday, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the state won seven of these seats.
In a series of setbacks for the BJP in Marathwada, several key leaders lost their seats in the Lok Sabha elections. Minister Raosaheb Danve was defeated by Congress' Kalyan Kale in Jalna by a significant margin of 1,09,958 votes, while former state minister Pankaja Munde lost to NCP (SP) candidate Bajrang Sonawne in Beed by 6,553 votes. In Nanded, BJP's Prataprao Chikhalikar lost to Congress' Vasantrao Chavan by 59,442 votes, and in Latur, Sudhakar Shrangare of the BJP was defeated by Congress' Shivaji Kalge by 61,881 votes. However, the Shiv Sena secured one victory as Sandipan Bhumare defeated sitting MP Imtiaz Jaleel in Aurangabad by 1,34,650 votes.
