Mumbai: Congress leader Nana Patole, who lost from Nagpur Lok Sabha seat to the BJP’s Nitin Gadkari, was booked along with his supporters for allegedly disrupting the vote counting process on May 23. An official said Mr Patole and his supporters entered the counting centre on May 23 without permission and then got into altercations with polling staff.
Kalamna police of Nagpur has registered a case against Mr Patole, local Congress leader Abhijeet Wanjari and 10-15 polling agents of the party on a complaint lodged by Shital Deshmukh, additional election officer, Nagpur East constituency on May 24, officials said.
A second complaint was registered against Nana Patole and his party workers for putting pressure on election officers during the selection of the VVPAT machine for counting votes. Mr Patole and his accomplices had allegedly started altercation and started sloganeering.
District collector and returning officer Ashwin Mudgal has informed the chief election commissioner in New Delhi and the chief electoral officer of the state about the complaint against Mr Patole
Mr Gadkari comfortably won the Nagpur Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 2,16,009 votes.
A former BJP president, Mr Gadkari polled 6,60,221 votes, while Mr Patole got 4,44,212 votes at the end of counting.
When Congress gave him a ticket to contest election against Mr Gadkari, Mr Patole was quite confident of winning, even declaring himself a giant killer. Mr Patole hails from the Kunbi community. He had won 4.5 lakh votes from the Nagpur constituency along with 2.5 lakh Muslim and 3.5 lakh Dalit votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Mr Patole wanted to ride on the Dalit, Muslim and Kunbi factor to defeat Mr Gadkari.
Mr Patole terms the contest as ‘Deekshabhoomi (the place where Dr BR Ambedkar converted to Buddhism) versus Sanghbhoomi (the RSS headquarters)’.
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