In yet another victory for the Mahayuti, Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has emerged as the single largest party in elections to the Ratnagiri Zilla Parishads and Panchayat Samitis. The party has won 40 of the 56 Zilla Parishad seats and 70 of the 112 Panchayat Samiti seats. The voting for the Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samiti elections was held on Saturday (February 7) from 7.30 am to 5.30 pm in 12 districts across three divisions of the state: Konkan, Pune and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. The Ratnagiri district has 56 Zilla Parishad seats and 112 seats in nine Panchayat Samitis (Mandangad, Dapoli, Khed, Chiplun, Guhagar, Ratnagiri, Sangmeshwar, Lanja, and Rajapur). According to the Maharashtra State Election Commission (SEC), Saturday's polling witnessed a voter turnout of around 67 per cent. This was the first election in the state after Ajit Pawar's demise in an unfortunate plane crash near the Baramati airport in the Pune district in January.
In the previous local body elections in Maharashtra in 2017, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 39 Zilla Parishad seats in the Ratnagiri district. The second largest party was the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which won 15 seats. On the other hand, the Congress had won just one seat. Similarly, in the Panchayat Samiti polls, the Shiv Sena bagged 73 of the 110 seats. It was followed by the NCP, which won 30 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won four seats, the Congress two and Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) one seat.
