'This Result Is Next To Impossible'

'Maharashtra election result is a chamatkar of EVM.'
'There has been a sudden one percent rise in the voting percentage after the counting day.'
'This is what made the difference to the election results.'
'How did this vote percentage increase after counting day?

IMAGE: Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde pays tribute to Balasaheb Thackeray on his death anniversary, November 17, 2024. Photograph: ANI Photo

Sanjay Raut, the senior Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray party leader, is unwilling to accept the outcome of the Maharashtra assembly elections.

The Bharatiya Janata Party with its allies the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar) has swept the state elections, the verdict shocking every poll pundit who did not see the magnitude of the electoral outcome.

For the Mahayuti, as the ruling alliance is called, it is a landslide in its favour.

The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance led by the Congress, Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar has been decimated.

"How can Eknath Shinde get 56 to 58 seats in Maharashtra? How is it possible? None of the gaddar MLAs of Shinde lost," Sanjay Raut tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.

The outcome of the Maharashtra assembly elections must be a shock to your party as the BJP and allies have swept the state.

In elections we do win and lose for sure, but not this way.

What is the reason for this verdict?

I have been saying since yesterday that there has been a sudden one percent rise in the voting percentage after the counting day. This is what made the difference to the election results.

How did this vote percentage increase after counting day? These are the questions that need to be answered.

But...

(Interrupts) The same thing happened in Haryana too (where the Congress blamed faulty EVMs for its loss).

What happens to the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb party now? What is the future?

Party will be here. It is not going anywhere.

You tell me, how can Eknath Shinde get 56 to 58 seats in Maharashtra? How is it possible?

None of the gaddar MLAs of Shinde lost. (Eknath Shinde had taken away 40 of the 54 Shiv Sena MLAs to join hands with the BJP to form the government in July 2022). Is it possible? Aisa hota hai kya? (do these things happen?) We have never witnessed such thing in Maharashtra in the past.

It looks like this was a wave for the BJP which nobody predicted.

There was no wave for the BJP in Maharashtra. This result is next to impossible.

But the Jharkhand assembly elections was won by the INDIA bloc and there nobody is blaming faulty EVMs.

This is what they do. They give the smaller state to the Opposition and take over the bigger state.

They gave Jammu and Kashmir to the Opposition and kept a bigger state like Haryana with them.

In Maharashtra they have the interests of industrialists they need to keep in mind, therefore they cannot afford to lose it.

But you have been saying this for very long. Even when you went to jail you said these things, but the people did not vote for your party.

The people of Maharashtra have not voted for the BJP or for that matter Eknath Shinde's party.

The Maharashtra assembly election result is a chamatkar of EVM.

This result is not the people's verdict.