The ruling Shiv Sena on Tuesday retained the Palghar (ST) Assembly seat in Thane district of Maharashtra, as its candidate Amit Ghoda trounced Rajendra Gavit of the Congress by a comfortable margin of 18,948 votes in the bypoll held on Sunday.
Amit riding a wave of sympathy generated by the passing away of his popular tribal leader-father Krishna Ghoda, polled 67,129 votes, as against 48,181 votes secured by the Congress’ Gavit. Bahujan Vikas Aghadi nominee Manisha Nimkar emerged third polling 36,781 votes in the polls.
Sunday’s bypolls had been necessitated by the untimely death of Krishna Ghoda who had died of a heart attack on May 24 last year. The Palghar-ST seat had remained vacant since then.
The importance of the Palghar-ST bypoll can be gauged from the fact that the Sena had contested the election in alliance with its senior partner BJP. So much so that Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP had campaigned for the Sena nominee in the bypoll.
Amit’s father Krishna Ghoda had bagged the Palghar seat in the October 2014 Assembly polls, by a narrow margin of 515 votes against then Minister and sitting Congress MlA Rajendra Gavit.
An influential politician in the newly-formed tribal district of Palghar, Sr Ghoda had been elected to the Maharashtra for the first time in 1988 from Dahanu constituency on a Congress ticket. Subsequently, he was elected twice on a NCP ticket to the State Assembly. He was, however, defeated in the 2009 polls. In the run-up to the 2014 Assembly polls, Ghoda switched over from the NCP to the Shiv Sena, which had fielded him from the neighbouring Palghar (ST) constituency.
With Amit’s elections, the number of Shiv Sena members in the 289-member Assembly has gone up 63. The tally of other parties in the House is include: BJP-122, Congress-42, NCP-41, PWP-3, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi-3. The parties like MIM, MNS, Samajwadi Party, CPM and Rashtriya Samaj Paksha have one seat each, while there are seven Independents in the House.