Senior Congress Leader Balasaheb Thorat Misses Out on Winning 9th Term as MLA

Mumbai: With his defeat, senior Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat, a low-profile and affable politician, has missed the chance of winning a ninth consecutive term to the state assembly.

The senior most MLA and Congress Legislature Party leader in the outgoing assembly, 71-year-old Thorat recently signalled his CM ambitions.

However, the former state minister is among the several Congress bigwigs who have bit dust in the just concluded assembly polls.

Vijay Bhausaheb Thorat, popularly known as Balasaheb Thorat, was defeated from Sangamner seat in Ahilyanagar district by Shiv Sena's Amol Khatal by a margin of 10,560 votes, as per the state poll results announced on Saturday.

He made his debut from Sangamner in 1985 as an independent. Thorat won all his subsequent elections from Sangamner as a Congress candidate.

During the 2019 assembly elections, he led the Congress as its state president.

He had replaced Ashok Chavan as the state Congress chief, who resigned after the party's poor show in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

It was a time when the then BJP and Shiv Sena alliance won the state polls.

Under Thorat's leadership, the Congress had managed to win 44 seats, two more than its 2014 tally.

A key figure in the cooperative movement in Ahilyanagar, Thorat is known to be close to Rahul Gandhi , the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Thorat, a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, served as a minister from 1999 to 2014 and later in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regime as well.

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