Maharashtra Bypolls: ‘Results shows people rejected BJP's politics,’ says Nana Patole

New Delhi: Nana Patole, the president of the Maharashtra Congress, stated on Sunday that the outcome of the byelection for the Andheri (East) constituency here showed that the public rejected the "politics of horse-trading and frightening political opponents" of the Bharatiya Janata Party. On Sunday, Rutuja Latke, a member of the Shiv Sena faction headed by Uddhav Thackeray, won the byelection with more than 66,000 votes. Latke's campaign has received support from the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), who were members of the former Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Uddhav Thackeray. After Latke's victory, Patole told reporters that he was confident the Congress and its partners will defeat the BJP in the upcoming elections.

According to him, the Andheri (East) byelection results demonstrate that the 'ED' (Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis) government is untrustworthy. "By casting their votes, the constituency demonstrated its confidence in the MVA and rejected the BJP's methods of horse-trading and frightening political rivals," he said. In addition, Patole refuted the BJP's assertion that it will not run in the byelection because a sitting MLA had passed away.

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"BJP had put up candidates in Kolhapur, Deglur and Pandharpur in the last two three years where bypoll was held due to death of sitting MLAs," he said. People have rejected the politics of the Eknath Shinde-led group and BJP of freezing the Shiv Sena party's name and symbol, he said, adding people will defeat the BJP and Shinde faction in all future elections. The November 3 election, necessitated due to the death of sitting Shiv Sena MLA and Rutuja Latke's husband Ramesh Latke in May this year, was a mere formality after the BJP withdrew its candidate from the race.

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