Kothrud leads from the front in BJP’s biggest victory in Pune

PUNE: For the second Lok Sabha election on the trot, a BJP candidate has the Kothrud assembly segment constituency to thank for a landslide victory.
Kothrud led from the front, giving Girish Bapat a victory margin of more than 1 lakh votes over Congress party’s Mohan Joshi.

The Parvati assembly segment was second in this context, while Kasba — Bapat’s home constituency — garnered the fourth-highest number of votes.In contrast, the traditional Congress bastion of Pune Cantonment did not give the grand old party’s candidate a much-needed leg up, opting instead to vote for Bapat.
Kothrud, which had the highest number of voters among the six assembly constituencies in the Pune Lok Sabha segment, gave Bapat 1,48,570 votes, a massive lead of 1,06,196 votes over Joshi.
The votes polled by BJP in Parvati, Vadgaon Sheri and Kasba were also nearly double that of Joshi’s. In comparison, Shivajinagar (29,532) and Pune Cantonment (12,733) gave Bapat modest victory margins.
In Parvati, 1,16,899 voters preferred Bapat to Joshi, who polled 50,567 votes. The BJP enjoyed similar numbers in Vadgaon Sheri (1,17,664), while 60,843 people exercised their franchise in Joshi’s favour. In Kasba, 1,03,583 cast their vote for Bapat, compared to the Congress’s tally of 51,192 votes.
BJP’s city leaders said their micro-level planning and efforts in reaching out to voters at the grass roots level have borne fruit. “Along with national issues, individual beneficiaries of government schemes like ‘Ujjwala’ and ‘Mudra’ also voted for BJP. It has helped increase the trust and appreciation for the party,” city BJP president Yogesh Gogawale said.
Gogawale said the party had covered all 1,194 booths in the city — workers were stationed there and a direct contact was established with 16 lakh voters. The party had organized booth- and assembly-level workshops to galvanize cadre.
Congress leaders, meanwhile, placed the blame on crucial votes drawn away by Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi. “Their candidate fared well in various pockets of the city dominated mostly by Congress supporters. That ate into our vote share,” said Joshi, who got 3.08 lakh votes.
Bapat said the party expanded its base outside its strongholds of Kothrud, Parvati and Kasba Peth. “The party got significant backing in these areas (Vadgaon Sheri and Shivajinagar), which led to our thumping victory,” he said.