Kolhapur: The Pune-based Meghraj Raje Bhosale-led Samarth Panel ousted sitting president Vijay Patkar's Kriyasheel Panel to register an almost single-handed win in the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal (ABMCM) election on Wednesday. The Samarth panel won 12 of 14 seats and the Kriyasheel could only win two seats.
The counting process started at 8am on Tuesday. It ended after 18 hours and the final results were announced at 2.30am. Voters of the ABMCM clearly wanted a change in the management as each of the Samarth Panel candidate secured win with comfortable margin of over 100 votes.
Patkar won the election with barely 18 votes against Samarath panel's Sushant Shelar. Raje Bhosale was challenged by Samruddhi Porey and former president Vijay Kondke. However, he secured easy win. Actress Varsha Usgaonkar defeated Nivedita Saraf in a closely contested battle.
"Our win clearly reflects the ABMCM members' sentiments. They wanted to change the way the organization was handled by previous directors. The biggest message we received from members is that they want more transparency in the directors' board. I assure them that we will have the best panel in the ABMCM's history," Raje Bhosale, told media persons.
On Sunday 54.64% of the total 3,907 voters had voted in Kolhapur, Mumbai and Pune to elect board of directors of Marathi film industrys premier organization. For the post of 14 directors, as many as 120 candidates are contesting the election in nine different panels.
On the loss, Patkar said, "We accept the defeat and the voters' opinion. Though our panel won only two seats, we will see that the elected directors follow the ABMCM principles," Patkar said.
Some of the major defeats registered were of former president Vijay Kondke and Prasad Surve, sitting vice-president Milind Ashtekar, director Mahesh Manjarekar, among others director Samruddhi Porey, actresses Nivedita Saraf, Pooja Pawar, Deepali Sayyad and actors Anand Kale, Milind Gavali, Sanjeev Naik, Sushant Shelar.
Meanwhile, voters from Nashik alleged irregularities in the voting list. "While Nashik had 250-odd voters, only 87 of could exercise their right of voting as the remaining were in the ‘disqualification list'," claimed Shyam Londhe, who contested the election from Shakti Panel. Most of the contestants in his panel were from Nashik. According to Londhe, many votes were deprived of their voting right as their membership renewal was pending. The election officer said that Kolhapur recorded highest voting percentage of 75% followed by Pune with 63%. "We were totally unware about the membership renewal policy. According to rules, the board should send reminders through mails and SMSs in advance. But, we did not receive any reminder. We travelled to Mumbai and were deprived of voting," Jayant Mundhada, a voter from Nashik, said.Interestingly, producer-director and actor Sachin Pilgaonkar, actress Ashalata Wabgaonkar and many well-known faces also failed to exercise their votes due to these technical reasons. The total voters' turn-out for this election was 54% due to the issues with voting list. "As a result of snags in voting list, Mumbai recorded the lowest voters turn-out with 46%. Nashik suffered the most," Londhe said.
List of winnersWinner Votes Victory margin Category
Samarth Panel
Meghraj Raje Bhosale 614 175 Producer
Satish Randive 710 333 Director
Pitambar Kale 718 150 Writer
Varsha Usgaonkar 566 50 Actress
Dhanaji Yamkar 589 175 Cinematography
Nikita Moghe 606 129 Dance
Madhukar Deshpande 649 197 Distribution
Vijay Khochikar 715 226 Editing
Sanjay Thube 520 88 Production
Sharad Chavan 621 101 Recordist
Chaitrali Dongare 593 194 Costume
Ranjit Jadhav 758 329 Workers
Kriyasheel Panel
Satish Bidkar 685 119 Art-Publicity
Vijay Patkar 584 18 Actor
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