Cong retains ZP president post, both parties claim more wins in panchayat polls

Nagpur: While the Congress retained the Nagpur Zilla Parishad president and vice-president posts courtesy its majority in the ZP, all major parties “claimed” victory in the gram panchayat polls.
In Nagpur district, there were 17 gram panchayats where elections were held. So while Congress’ rural unit president Rajendra Mulak claimed victory in 11 sarpanch seats, his counterpart in BJP, Arvind Gajbhiye, staked claim on 10 seats. Gajbhiye said, “In gram panchayat member polls, we won 81 out of 125 seats.”
Shivraj Gujar, NCP’s Nagpur (rural) unit president, explained why this math does not add up. “In gram panchayat polls, candidates do not contest on party tickets. So basically parties support candidates and many times it happens that two-three parties will claim the same candidate as their own because all are supporting him/her. So if you ask BJP, they will claim maximum seats and even our people can stake claim to some,” said Gujar.
He added that it’s “impossible” to ever get an accurate figure. Gujar said, “You can speculate for sure. Every media house will do it but at best it will be 90% accurate. And because no one will hang you if you get it wrong, everyone speculates.”
Some political pundits claimed that both Congress and BJP won six sarpanch seats each out of 17.
The District Information Office (DIO) shares official statistics from the State Election Commission with media. Till the time of going to press, no official statistics had been released.
In Nagpur ZP polls, however, there was no confusion. The Congress-NCP alliance accounted for on-paper strength of 39 votes (out of 58), hence their victory was more or less confirmed. Mukta Kakode was elected president with 39 votes while Kunda Raut was elected vice-president with 38 votes.
Both posts went to senior ally Congress, as NCP will later be accommodated with two chairman posts.
The only political excitement in the dead rubber contest was a mini rebellion by a Congress member, who disagreed with the choice of his party’s ZP president candidate. Outgoing ZP president Rashmi Barve said, “Since the voting was done by show of hands, we know how all members voted. From Congress three members and one from NCP did not vote for the party’s candidate.” Despite the ‘rebel group’, the alliance’s brute majority ensured that their candidates did not face any problems.
Nana Kambhale, the Congress member who led the small dissenting group, said, “I did not raise a voice against the party, but against the way senior leader Sunil Kedar is handling things. He never consults anybody and decides all things by himself. I will complain against Kedar to party high command also.”
Megha Mankar, another Congress member, said, “Funds were not being released for works in our area, hence, we were unhappy with the current leadership.”
Regardless, the Congress-NCP alliance got support from other small groups, which negated even the small dent in its vote share from within.