Palghar (Maharashtra), Nov 23 (IANS) A plucky, lone Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate held aloft his Red flag to stop the BJP’s road roller that practically razed the entire opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the results of which are now tumbling out.

The CPM nominee and sitting MLA, Vinod Bhiva Nikole, 49, bagged a historic victory in the Dahanu (ST) reserved constituency in Palghar district, proving wrong all pundits, pollsters and pessimists, defeating his nearest Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rival Vinod S. Medha (votes 99,569), by a margin of around 5,133 votes.

“This is a historic victory for the CPI(M)-Maha Vikas Aghadi nominee, Comrade Nikole who has secured a record of 104,702 votes and trounced the BJP’s contender in a tightly fought election,” CPI (M) Politburo Member and All India Kisan Sabha President Dr Ashok Dhawale told .

Speaking from near the counting centre, Dhawale gushed that this is the 10th out of the past 11 Assembly elections since 1978 that the CPI (M) has bagged this key constituency giving five different candidates, and this is Nikole’s second consecutive victory (after 2019).

The seat, known as Jawhar (ST) seat, prior to the delimitation of 2009 is the red bastion bordering the Gujarat state with a predominantly tribal population and occasionally keeps popping into news for various reasons.

In fact, Dahanu with a female-dominant electorate, ranked among the few of the 288 seats in Maharashtra which recorded a 70+ per cent voter turnout. The electorate here is a total of 301,239, comprising 151,578 women and 149,627 men.

Of these, the total votes cast were 220,919 votes (73.34 per cent), including females: voted -113,808 and males: voted -107,104.

An aide to Nikole acknowledged that it was “an uphill task against a political cyclone,” considering the aggressive BJP-MahaYuti alliance poll campaign and resources, with national-level bigwigs canvassing in the region during the past one month or so.

Dhawale spoke of Nikole in glowing terms and recounted his participation in a series of struggles launched by the CPI (M) in the Palghar district which reinforced the people’s trust in the Red flag and resulted in the ‘Lal Salaam’ of victory.

“As the sitting Dahanu (ST) MLA, he performed very efficiently, took up the concerns of the masses and solved their problems, besides enjoying a completely clean image – unlike many of the ‘tainted, commission-seeker’ elected representatives from other parties,” said the AIKS President.

Moreover, the CPI (M) and Nikole managed to unite the MVA constituents here and they all jointly campaigned for him, and raised local issues of Dahanu (ST) with a focus that helped boost the confidence of the local voters here.

“We also conducted 14 meetings in all the Zilla Parishad Circles, plus one in Dahanu town to ensure we reached out to the maximum number of voters. We held exclusive women’s rallies and explained to them various issues, including the ‘Ladki Bahin’ scheme,” said Dhawale.

The CPI (M) top leaders hailed Nikole and Dhawale, along with Mariam Dhawale, Kisan Gujar, Kiran Gahala, Radka Kalangda, Laxman Dombre, Lahani Dauda, Chandrakant Ghorkhana, Sunita Shingda, Nandu Hadal, Ramu Pagi, and many others took out a victory procession with another celebration procession planned in Talasari on Sunday.

CPI (M) Politburo Member Brinda Karat had also come and addressed several rallies for Nikole and grassroots workers of the CPI(M), the MVA and other organisations like AIKS, CITU, AIDWA, DYFI and SFI helped in ensuring the unique win.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: [email protected])