Sakoli Election Results 2019: Nana Patole wins by 5,000 votes, avenges BJP snub

Sakoli, Maharashtra Assembly Election Results 2019: Congress leader Nana Patole has won from Sakoli Assembly seat in the Bhandara district of Maharashtra, defeating his rival candidate BJP’s Parinay Ramesh Fuke by a margin of 5,309 votes. Patole had created a flutter in 2017 by publicly criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies.

Patole won this seat while contesting on BJP ticket in 2009 Assembly elections. The party then fielded him in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014 from Bhandara-Gondiya. He defeated NCP leader Praful Patel by a margin of nearly 1.50 lakh votes in the parliamentary election.

In the Assembly elections held in the same year, the BJP fielded Kashiwar Rajesh Lahanu from Sakoli Assembly seat. Patole, however, quit the BJP in 2017 and resigned from the Lok Sabha as well.

He joined the Congress party in January 2018. Patole is currently the chairman of the Kisan Khet Mazdoor Congress. In the general elections held this year, he unsuccessfully contested elections against BJP leader Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur.

During the Assembly election campaigns, Patole alleged that both the BJP government in Delhi and Maharashtra were favouring a few industrialists and described their policies as against the poor and farmers. Patole also claimed that the local administration was biased against non-BJP functionaries as he sought to specifically point out that Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel’s helicopter was not allowed to land for a rally. He said that the rally was planned after that if PM Modi’s but the administration was under pressure from the BJP to not allow the Congress leader’s helicopter to land.

Patole also spoke about the seizure of nearly Rs 18 lakh from a relative of BJP leader Parinay Fuke ahead of the elections and went on to accuse the BJP of misusing the state machinery against the opposition leaders.

Fuke, on the other hand, is a longtime friend of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. A native of Nagpur, he is a Member of the Legislative Council from the Local Area Constituency of Bhandara-Gondia districts. He worked as PA to Fadnavis when the latter was made state unit president in April 2013. He was inducted into the Fadnavis government as Minister of State for PWD and Forests post-Lok Sabha elections in April-may this year.