Shetty got max vote share in state, Gadkari in region

Nagpur: Among 48 MP seats in Maharashtra, Gopal Shetty from Mumbai North, who crushed Bollywood star Urmila Matondkar, has emerged as the one with the highest victory margin. Shetty defeated her with a margin of over 4.12 lakh votes to retain his seat.
He is followed by Shiv Sena’s Rajan Vichare, who emerged winner with a margin of 4.12 lakh votes from Thane and Unmesh Patil from Jalgaon who romped home with over 4.11 lakh votes.
From Vidarbha’s ten constituencies, BJP’s Sanjay Dhotre from Akola topped the list of highest margins by crushing Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi’s (VBA) Prakash Ambedkar by over 2.75 lakh votes. He’s followed by Union minister Nitin Gadkari who romped home with a margin of over 2.16 lakh votes against Congress’ Nana Patole from Nagpur.
First-time contestant from Bhandara-Gondia constituency, Sunil Mendhe, occupied the third spot by defeating rival Nana Panchbudhe by 1.97 lakh votes. However, none from Vidarbha are in the top ten list in the statew in terms of victory margin.
If the percentage of vote share is taken into account, Shetty again leads the chart by securing over 71% votes from his constituency, followed by Patil and Vichare. Here too, there’s no one from Vidarbha in top ten, indicating a relatively close fight between the BJP-Sena alliance and Congress-NCP’s Democratic Front.
Gadkari, however, occupied the numero uno position as far as vote share percentage is concerned. He secured 55.67% votes despite the fact that his victory margin is much lesser than Dhotre’s. BJP MP from Wardha, Ramdas Tadas, took the second slot with a vote percentage of 53.92 and Sunil Mendhe from Bhandara with 52.23 at third position.
Dhotre is a distant fourth with vote share of 49.53%, clearly indicating that he benefited primarily due to splitting of votes between Ambedkar and Congress’ Hidayat Patel.
Among the constituencies which witnessed a close fight, Aurangabad leads the chart. The Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM, which is in coalition with Ambedkar’s VBA, managed to snatch victory for its candidate Imtiaz Jaleel, a former journalist, by a margin of just 4,492 votes. He defeated Shiv Sena’s Chandrakant Khaire.
NCP’s Sunil Tatkare, the former state minister, is second in terms of lowest victory margin by winning from Raigad constituency against Union minister Anant Geete of Sena with just 31,438 votes. Independent Navneet Rana from Amravati, who caused a major upset by defeating five-time Sena MP Anand Adsul by 36,951 votes, is at third position.
BJP’s Prataprao Chikhlikar, who defeated MPCC president and former chief minister Ashok Chavan, by 40,148 votes, occupies fourth rank. Congress’ Suresh Dhanorkar, the former Shiv Sena MLA, who proved to be giant killer by defeating Union minister for home Hansraj Ahir by 44,463 votes, is at fifth position. In most of the fights for MPs’ seats, the close ones were witnessed where bigwigs like Chavan, Ahir and Geete were involved.
(Inputs from Samidha Raut & Jhanvi Shirsat)