Ebb & flow: Jaiswal regains top position in 19th round

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: BJP and Mahayuti candidate, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen Naser Siddiqui experienced ebb and flow in the different rounds during the Aurangabad Central Assembly Constituencies with a narrow margin.

The activists and supporters reached the counting centre at Government Polytechnic to know the round-wise lead of their candidate. As and when their candidate took the lead, they burst crackers and sprayed gullal.

Police maintained a tight bandobast in and around the counting centre to avoid any untoward incident. Police put barricades from both sides of the roads in front of the Government Polytechnic. The counting of the Central Constituency started at 8 am.

In the first round, 10,155 votes were counted. Jaiswal secured 3,921 votes while Naser got 3,886 votes. Jaiswal took a lead of just 35 votes in this round.

Shindesena candidate maintained the first position up 14th round with a lead of 1760 votes. He was in second place up to the 18th round while succeeding in retaining first place in the 19th round with a slight margin.

His total reached up to 65,667 votes. After this, the sitting MLA never looked back until the final round. He was the declared winner with a margin of 8,119.

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Naser reached 1st place in the 15th round

AIMIM candidate Naser Siddiqui was in second position when the counting began with a total vote of 3,886 votes in the first round. He maintained second place up to round sixth. He was in third place in the seventh and eighth rounds. He retained second place in the 9th round by securing a total 21,705 votes. He jumped to first place in the 15th round by a margin of 4,099 votes. He was in first place up to round 18 with a different number of votes of margin. He got 62,992 total votes in this round.

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Dr Thorat reaches 2nd place

Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and Maha Vikas Aghadi candidate Dr Balasaheb Thorat received 1581 votes and he was in third place in the first round. He jumped to second place in the seventh round with a total of 13,805 votes. He was ahead of Naser up to eight rounds with a margin of 1849 votes.

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Other vote seekers

Dr Balasaheb Thorat and Mohammed Jawed Qureshi are other top vote seekers after Jaiswal and Naser.

With 37,098 votes, Dr Thorat is in third place in the final round.

After him, Javed Qureshi from Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) is another candidate who got good a amount of votes (12,639).

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Over 500 employees did not get postal ballots

A group of employees told this newspaper that around 500 staff members who were on election duty were not given postal ballots to exercise their franchise.

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2610 postal

A total of 2610 employees used their rights through postal ballot. Jaiswal, Dr Thorat and Naser succeeded in getting 1257, 708 and 439 postal ballots respectively. A total of five candidates, out of a total of 24, did not have any postal ballot votes.

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NOTA

A total of 939 voters used None of the above(NOTA) options. The highest number of NOTA was counted in the 17th round.

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Naser lost for 2nd time

Naser Siddiqui contested the Assembly election in 2019 and lost by 13,892. Jaiswal, the then-candidate of undivided Shiv Sena, had received 82,217 votes while Naser secured 68,325. He lost the election from this constituency for the second time, though his votes were increased by around 10,000, this time around.