Three Assemblies, just 22 women

NEW DELHI: It seems women candidates were not popular among voters in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh as just 22 of the 287 in the fray were elected to the three Houses. While 10 out of 211 women contestants won elections in Maharashtra, nine out of 67 made it to the Haryana Assembly. In Arunachal Pradesh, they fared better with three of the nine candidates emerging victorious. The last Maharashtra House had 12 women MLAs while in Haryana the figure was 13. Arunachal Assembly had no representation of women MLAs last time.

Trinamool lost three seats by just 50 votes

ITANAGAR: The Trinamool Congress which won five seats in the Arunachal Assembly elections lost three seats by a margin of just 50 votes. “We expected eight to 10 seats, but three of our candidates lost by less than 50 votes,’’ said the party’s state unit chief Kito Sora here, adding that the state unit was floated only on September 12 and fought the elections on October 13. “If we had started two months ago, the party would have won at least 15 seats,” he said.

Grandfather’s revenge

MUMBAI: This battle was straight out of Mahabharata. In Nilanga Assembly seat, a sitting BJP MLA who took on his grandfather, former chief minister Shivajirao Patil Nilangekar of the Congress-NCP combine, realised that voters preferred age and experience to youth. The 32-year-old Sambhaji Patil Nilangekar was in the fray for the October 13 poll from this constituency in Marathwada region against his grandfather, whom he had defeated in 2004. The 77-year-old, an eight-term MLA, avenged his last loss by humbling Sambhaji by 7,504 votes.