NEW DELHI, October 29 (Aalimi Nation) – The Congress has retained the Nagpur Division Graduates' seat in the Maharashtra Legislative Council, a result that has sharpened a political exchange between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Opposition over the outcome of legislative council elections held across several states.

Congress candidate and sitting member Abhijeet Wanjari defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party's Sudhakar Kohale by 3,271 votes, polling 67,231 votes to Kohale's 63,960 in the final round of the preferential count, according to reports of the result. Kohale had led by 4,294 votes after the second round of counting on Wednesday, but Wanjari overtook him as second-preference votes were counted. The count ran for more than 40 hours.

Voting for five Maharashtra seats was held on October 23. Apart from Nagpur, Harshada Deshmukh-Jadhav of the NCP (SP) beat the BJP's Smita Jadhav in the Pune Graduates' constituency, and the NCP (SP) also won the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Graduates' seat. In the teachers' constituencies, Kiran Sarnaik of the Shiv Sena won in Amravati and Kaustubh Gawade of the BJP won in Pune. That gave the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi three seats and the ruling Mahayuti two.

Wanjari first won the Nagpur seat in 2020, defeating the BJP's Sandip Joshi by 18,910 votes, ending the party's long hold on the constituency. State Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal said after the result, "However, the bubble of illusion has burst in the end."

In Uttar Pradesh, polling for 11 council seats, five graduates' and six teachers' constituencies, was also held on October 23, with 152 candidates and about 14.81 lakh voters. Overall polling was about 55 per cent. Counting took place at seven centres. The Samajwadi Party's Lal Bihari Yadav won the Varanasi Teachers' seat against the BJP's Pramod Kumar Mishra, having led by 10,958 votes to 6,060 after two rounds. The BJP won the Agra and Meerut graduates' seats and the Lucknow teachers' seat, where Umesh Dwivedi won by 4,818 votes. Reports on the overall tally differed while counting was still being finalised, so no total is given here. In Karnataka, the BJP-JD(S) alliance was reported to have won all four council seats earlier this week.

On October 28, Modi referred on X to results in 28 seats across four states and noted that ballot papers had been used, asking, "Guess how many seats Congress won?", according to a report of the post. On Thursday, Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh responded on X, saying the Prime Minister should introspect rather than lecture others. He said the BJP had lost both seats in Modi's Varanasi parliamentary constituency and that the Congress had defeated the BJP in Nagpur, the base of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Ramesh described results in Lucknow, Prayagraj and Patna as a "no-confidence motion" against government policies, and cited inflation, unemployment and slow private investment.

Congress leader Ajay Rai also said the BJP had been "completely cornered" in the Uttar Pradesh results. These are political statements by Congress leaders, and no formal response from the BJP to Ramesh's remarks had been reported at the time of writing.