PUNE: Deputy chief minister Sunetra Pawar, riding a sympathy wave, on Monday won the Baramati bypoll by a margin of 2,18,034 votes, the highest-ever recorded by any candidate in an assembly election in the country.She polled 2,18,969 votes and New Rashtriya Samaj Party candidate R Y Ghutukade finished second with 935 votes, while NOTA came third with 774 votes. A total of 2,23,705 voters exercised their franchise.BJP leader Sunil Kumar Sharma, who won the Sahibabad assembly seat in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh in 2022 by a margin of 2.14 lakh votes, defeating his Samajwadi Party rival, held the previous record.Sunetra also surpassed the benchmarks set by her husband, former deputy CM Ajit Pawar, and his uncle, NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, who earlier represented the Baramati constituency. Ajit Pawar’s 2019 victory over BJP’s Gopichand Padalkar by a margin of 1.65 lakh votes was the highest in Maharashtra assembly elections, while Sharad Pawar’s 75% vote share in 1990 was the highest recorded for a winning candidate in Baramati.
Except for 1962, the Pawar family has won all assembly elections from Baramati. Sharad Pawar represented the constituency from 1967 to 1990, followed by his nephew Ajit Pawar from 1995 onwards. Despite winning the seat seven consecutive times, Ajit Pawar never crossed the 75% vote share mark set by his uncle. But Sunetra secured around 98% of the total votes in the bypoll, breaking Pawar’s long-standing record.NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar in a social media post said, “Heartfelt congratulations to Sunetra kaki for being elected from the Baramati assembly constituency with a record-breaking margin of 2.18 lakh votes, surpassing the previous national record of 2.14 lakh votes. This victory clearly reflects the love that the people of Baramati have for Ajit dada, as well as a heartfelt tribute offered to him with gratitude, as expected.“The bypoll was necessitated following the death of Ajit Pawar in a plane crash on Jan 28. Sunetra assumed office as deputy CM and was elected the party’s national president. She contested the Baramati assembly seat for the first time. It was her second electoral contest after her defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha election against her sister-in-law Supriya Sule.A total of 23 candidates were in the fray; most were independents or from smaller, unrecognised parties. No major political party fielded a candidate as a mark of respect to Ajit Pawar. The Congress had initially nominated a candidate but withdrew on the last day.Sunetra thanked the Mahayuti and Mahavikas Aghadi alliances, along with allies, organisations and various groups for their support. “Let us celebrate this victory through work rather than festivities,” she told supporters. The deputy CM said she would follow the ideology of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Shahu Maharaj, Mahatma Phule and B R Ambedkar, and walk on the path shown by Yashwantrao Chavan and Ajit Pawar.
