BRS wins 54 gram panchayats in electoral debut in Maharashtra

The BRS could make its impact felt in a big way in Tumsur constituency, where it won 20 major panchayats out of the 55 gram panchayats in the constituency that it had candidates.

Hyderabad: The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has continued its impressive debut in Maharashtra, winning 54 of the 2359 gram panchayats that went to polls. This is a good beginning for the party in the State that witnessed multi-cornered contests, said Shankar Anna Dhondge, BRS leader and former MLA.

The BRS could make its impact felt in a big way in Tumsur constituency, where it won 20 major panchayats out of the 55 gram panchayats in the constituency that it had candidates.

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Former MLA Charan Waghmare, who switched his loyalties from BJP to BRS spearheaded the party campaign at the grassroot level electoral tussle. BRS Kisan Cell chief of Maharashtra Manik Kadam said the party won 17 gram panchayats in Sholapur, 13 in Jalgaon, 2 each in Beed and Ratnagiri and one in Ahmadnagar.

The gram panchayat elections were fought on a non-partisan basis. The main political parties backed their candidates to consolidate their support base. Results of 2,226 out of the 2,359 gram panchayats that went to polls were declared so far.

The BJP claimed to have won 717 gram panchayats, followed by the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP with 407 and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena with 262, while the Congress won 207 seats, NCP’s Sharad Pawar faction got 185 and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction won 114 seats.