Maharashtra’s former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Narayan Rane on Wednesday suffered a humiliating defeat in the Bandra (East) Assembly by-polls, as the ruling Shiv Sena retained the seat by a bigger margin of votes than in the previous election.
On a day when the Opposition NCP retained the Tasgaon-Kavathe Mahankal seat vacated by its late former Deputy Chief Minister RR Patil by a huge margin of votes, Shiv Sena’s Trupti Sawant — widow of late sitting MlA Prakash Sawant — romped home, trouncing Rane by comfortable margin of 19,008 votes.
While Trupti Patil polled 52,711 votes, Rane secured 33,703 votes in a three-cornered contest for all practical purposes. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (MIM)’s Raja Rahbar Khan emerged third in the contest, by polling 15,050 votes. Sena’s Trupti bagged the seat by a margin of 3,587 bigger than that of the winning margin of 15,421 votes posted by her husband Prakash Sawant who died in January this year.
Riding on a sympathy wave, late RR Patil’s widow Suman Patil retained the seat (in western Maharashtra) held by her late husband, by rebel BJP candidate Swapnil Patil by a thumping margin of 1,12,963 votes in what literally was a one-horse contest.
Suman Patil polled 1,31,235 votes, as against a mere 18,273 votes secured by Swapnil Patil, who lost the deposit in the polls. The victory margin of Suman was nearly 1 lakh votes than that of the one posted by her later husband RR Patil in the October 2014 polls.
Rane, who was looking forward to political rehabilitation of sorts, faced acute embarrassment of getting defeated in the Assembly polls for the second time in less than six months. He had suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of Shiv Sena’s Vaibhav Naik in his home constituency of Kudal in Sindhudurg district in the 2014 Assembly polls.
Six-time MlA Rane, who was desperate to return to the State Assembly after his first-ever defeat in the Assembly polls held in October last year, had specially requested the Congress high command to give him a ticket to contest the by-polls from Bandra (East) which incidentally is not his constituency. Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan had pushed Rane’s case with the party high command and got him the party ticket.
Now with his defeat, Rane’s political career has taken a major dent. Though he is not the one to give up easily, Rane will have to wait for some time to return to the centre stage.
Reacting to his defeat, Rane said: “I accept the people’s verdict. The people have voted on emotional lines instead of relying on a development agenda on which I campaigned. I do not blame anybody. If the responsibility has to be taken, I will take all responsibility.”