Kamthi Election Result: Congress's Suresh Bhoyar Leads Vs BJP's Chandrashekhar Bawankule

In Kamthi assembly constituency Suresh Bhoyar of the Congress is leading, as per official EC records. BJP State unit president Chandrashekhar Bawankule is trailing by a margin of 5,567 votes.

Bhoyar is a former president of the Nagpur Zila Panchayat. In the 2019 Assembly elections, he contested from the Kamthi seat for the first time but lost. BJP candidate Tekchand Sawarkar won from the seat, securing 1,18,182 votes, while Bhoyar retreated to the second position, garnering 1,07,066 votes.

Since the debut Assembly elections in 1962, Kamthi was considered as a Congress stronghold for a long time. In 1995, independent candidate Deorao Radke won the seat, breaking the grand old party’s dominion on the sat. In 1999, the Republican Party of India’s Sulekha Kumbhare emerged as the winner. In 2004, the BJP secured victory in the constituency for the first time and has been retaining the seat till now.

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Bhoyar maintains a special connection to the seat because his father, Yadavrao Bhoyar, won from the constituency in 1985 and 1990. Bhoyar hopes that in the assembly polls, he will be able to capitalise anti-incumbency sentiment against Bawankule, who previously held the constituency.

Meanwhile, Bawankule’s appointment as party chief in 2022, is considered as a party’s strategic decision to expand and strengthen the party’s base among OBCs in Maharashtra. He belongs to the Teli community. Telis constitute considerable portion of Vidarbha population.

In 2004, his debut Assembly polls from Maharashtra, he won from Kamthi constituency. He defeated Republican Party of India (RPI)’s Bawankule by a margin of 7,394 votes. In 2009 and 2014, Bawankule retained the seat in Kamthi. He then served as the Energy Minister in the BJP-Shinde coalition government led by Devendra Fadnavis.

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However, in the 2019 election, the BJP denied Bawankule the poll ticket, citing that central leadership is unhappy over corruption charges during his tenure as minister. After that, he kept a low profile. But dip in party’s vote share from Vidarbha region in 2019 in comparison to 2014 was partly attributed to keeping Bawankule aside from electoral fray. Thus, soon after the polls, Bawankule was reinstated as party general secretary and in the December 2021 Legislative Council elections, he won from Nagpur.