STAGE is set for a fierce battle between Mahayuti and Maha Vikas Aaghadi (MVA) in Umred Assembly constituency. Election results in the constituency have given mixed results with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning in 2009 and 2014 while Indian National Congress getting the seat back in 2019 Assembly polls. What makes this constituency interesting is that the winner of last State Assembly elections from Congress, Raju Parwe, switched sides to Shiv Sena (Shinde) just before the Lok Sabha elections and lost the parliamentary elections from Ramtek seat.

 

The Umred seat has also become matter of contention between BJP and Shiv Sena (Shinde) as Parwe wants to get his seat back while BJP has claimed the seat with Sudhakar Kohle, President of BJP’s Nagpur (Rural) unit expressing desire to contest. Ramdas Athavale has also claimed the seat reserved for Scheduled Caste (SC). Raju Parwe might be winner from the seat in 2019 but he seem to have lost confidence of the electors. While he got 91,968 votes as INC candidate in 2019 Assembly elections, he succeeded in getting only 83,289 votes in the constituency in 2024 Lok Sabha elections despite backing of State and Central BJP leadership. Sudhir Parwe, the losing BJP candidate in 2019 got 73,939 votes amounting to 37.7% of total vote share while BSP’s Sandip Meshram was third with 18,567 votes. Earlier in 2014, Raju Parwe had got 23,497 votes in 2014 Assembly election as an independent candidate, even more than Congress candidate Sanjay Meshram with 17,586 votes.

 

The election was won comfortably by Sudhir Parwe of BJP who got 92,399 votes, almost 50% of the vote share. Rukshadas Bansod of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was second with 34,077 votes. Sudhir Parwe had won the Assembly seat in 2009 as well with almost equal vote share after getting 85,416 votes. Shirish Meshram of Congress was second after getting 40,720 votes, almost half of that of Sudhir Parwe and more than twice of third placed Sandip Gawai, an independent candidate. Congress which seems to got the code of conquering the Umred seat in two major elections is yet to declare its candidate. It will be interesting to see if Congress can maintain its winning streak or Mahayuti proves the victory of Congress a fluke by winning back the lost bastion.