Many BJP ‘imports’ fail election test despite Modi rallies

Due to last-minute split in alliances, all major parties experienced a crunch of winnable candidates, leading to them 'importing' candidates.

Voters appear to have given a mixed verdict to candidates “imported” by the BJP, especially from the NCP and the Congress, in the runup to the elections. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rallies in and around their constituencies failed to benefit many of them.

Of the 54 candidates who had walked into the BJP fold and contested the polls, as many as 34, including some big names, failed while 20 passed the ballot test.

Due to last-minute split in alliances, all major parties experienced a crunch of winnable candidates, leading to them “importing” candidates.

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Of the 54 candidates who switched to the BJP, 22 were from the NCP, 18 from the Congress and 10 from the Shiv Sena. Four candidates came from smaller parties.

Among the high-profile BJP imports who lost is former NCP leader and cabinet minister Babanrao Pachpute. He joined the party a week before the polls were announced. Pachpute, who heads the Saikrupa private sugar factory, faced his eighth election but lost to NCP’s Rahul Jagtap.

In Tasgaon Kavthe-Mahankal seat, the BJP pitted Ajit Ghorpade — an NCP import — against NCP strongman R R Patil.

In 2009, R R Patil had won the seat by a margin of 65,000 votes. After Modi’s rally in Tasgaon where lakhs turned up, Ghorpade was expected to spring a surprise. However, Patil sent him packing by over 15,000 votes.

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In Paloos-Kadegaon seat in Sangli, the BJP pitted Prithviraj Deshmukh. The BJP took Deshmukh into its fold just before the polls were announced. Deshmukh lost by a margin of 24,000 votes to Kadam Patangrao Shripatrao.

The BJP “imports” who passed the test include its Nandurbar candidate Vijaykumar Gavit, the former tribal development minister and NCP leader who contested against Congress’s Kunal Vasave. Gavit won by a margin of 27,000.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More