Ahmednagar (Maharashtra) Election 2019: BJP candidate Sujay Vikhe Patil out to forge his own legacy

Ahmednagar is one of the 14 parliamentary constituencies in Maharashtra that went to polls in the third phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on April 23. The total voter turnout in the constituency was recorded at 57.75 per cent. The candidates in the fray were - Sujay Vikhe Patil of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sangram Arun Jagtap of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Arjun Namdeo Wakale of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The current sitting Member of Parliament (MP) from Ahmednagar seat is senior BJP leader Dilipkumar Gandhi who has won from the seat thrice. Nevertheless, the saffron party leadership decided to drop Gandhi from the fray and fielded Sujay Vikhe Patil, the son of Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and grandson of former union finance minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil.

In the 2014 general elections, Dilipkumar Gandhi secured a landslide victory becoming the MP from Ahmednagar for the third time. He received 6.05 lakh votes at 56.97 per cent vote share while NCP runner up Rajeev Rajale managed to get 3.96 lakh votes at 37.28 per cent vote share.

Earlier in 2009, Gandhi had secured his second term from the constituency after defeating Shivaji Kardile of the NCP by some 46,000 votes. In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, NCP candidate Tukaram Gangadhar Gadakh was elected MP after a comfortable victory.

The Ahmednagar constituency comprises of six Legislative Assembly segments and has a total 1,517,951 electorates out of which 789,897 are males and the remaining 728,054 are females.