Maharashtra: BJP loses all 4 Lok Sabha seats it contested in Marathwada

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: The Bharatiya Janata Party has lost all four seats in the Marathwada region which it contested, including Jalna where Union minister Raosaheb Danve faced defeat.

Sandipan Bhumare is the only candidate of Maharashtra's ruling Mahayuti who won the Lok Sabha poll in Marathwada on Tuesday.

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.

The ruling Mahayuti comprises the BJP, Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the NCP headed by Deputy CM Ajit Pawar.

The MVA constituents include the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray-headed Shiv Sena (UBT) and the NCP (SP) led by Sharad Pawar.

Jalna district, which was the epicentre of the Maratha quota agitation led by Manoj Jarange, was a BJP stronghold since 1996.

Raosaheb Danve won the Jalna seat seat five times in a row from 1999.

But this time, Danve lost the seat to Congress' Kalyan Kale who won by a margin of 1,09,958 votes.

Mangesh Sable, an independent candidate, polled 1,55,930 votes.

Another setback to the BJP came in Beed where its candidate and former state minister Pankaja Munde lost the election to NCP (SP) candidate Bajrang Sonawne, who won by a margin of 6,553 votes after a see-saw battle.

This is Munde's second defeat after she lost the state assembly election in 2019 to her cousin and NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.

In Nanded also, the stronghold of former CM Ashok Chavan who joined the BJP in February this year after quitting the Congress, the saffron party faced defeat.

BJP two-term MP Prataprao Chikhalikar lost the elections to Congress' Vasantrao Chavan by 59,442 votes.

In Latur also, BJP's Sudhakar Shrangare, who was contesting the Lok Sabha poll from the seat for the second time, lost to Congress' Shivaji Kalge by 61,881 votes.

The Congress won this seat for the first time after 2009.

The Shiv Sena led by CM Shinde bagged one out of the two seats it contested this time.

Its candidate Sandipan Bhumare defeated sitting MP Imtiaz Jaleel in Aurangabad Lok Sabha seat by 1,34,650 votes.

Shiv Sena's Hingoli seat candidate Baburao Kadam Kohlikar lost the election to Shiv Sena (UBT) nominee Nagesh Patil Aashtikar by 1,08,602 votes.

The Shiv Sena (UBT) also won the Osmanabad where its candidate Omprakash Rajenimbalkar defeated NCP candidate Archana Patil by a huge margin of 3,29,846 votes.

Archana Patil, the wife of BJP MLA Rana Jagjitsinha Patil, joined the NCP before the Lok Sabha elections.

Another ruling alliance partner Rashtriya Samaj Paksha faced defeat in Parbhani where its head Mahadev Jankar lost to Sanjay Jadhav of the Shiv Sena (UBT) by a margin of 1,34,061 votes.

Parbhani has been a stronghold of the Shiv Sena (undivided) which won the seat from 1999.

After the Shiv Sena split in 2022, Sanjay Jadhav remained in the Uddhav Thackeray camp and contested the Lok Sabha election for the third time this year and made a hat-trick with Tuesday's win.