By IANS,
Beed (Maharashtra) : In a jolt to senior Maharashtra Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Gopinath Munde in his home district Beed, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Friday retained the Kej assembly seat, the by-election results of which were announced here Friday afternoon.
NCP’s Prithviraj Sathe defeated BJP’s Sangeet Thombre by a margin of around 8,500 votes in the election. Polling for the Scheduled Caste reserved constituency was completed last Monday.
The election was necessitated by the death of former health minister and senior NCP woman leader Vimal Mundada two months ago.
The Kej by-election was largely perceived as a battle of supremacy between BJP MP from Beed and deputy leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde and senior NCP leader and state Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
While Pawar and several other top NCP leaders actively campaigned for Sathe, senior BJP leaders, Munde and his daughter Pankaja Munde-Palve also aggressively campaigned for Thombre.
The outcome is also considered the NCP’s ‘sweet revenge’ against the BJP which had wrested the Khadakvasla by-election in Pune district by notching a victory in Pawar’s backyard, last year.