Uddhav's Shiv Sena candidate Rutuja Latke wins Andheri East bypoll

The winning Shiv Sena candidate of Uddhav Thackeray faction for Andheri East bypolls, Rutuja Latke has promised that she will try to fulfill the promise made by her late husband Ramesh Latke.

Rutuja has retained the seat of her husband after leading the Andheri East bypolls by 66,530 votes.

"This victory is of my husband and the development works he did in Andheri. I will go to the election centre now and later to Matoshree to seek blessings," Shiv Sena's Rutuja Latke said while addressing the media in Mumbai on Sunday.

She said, "I thank everyone for supporting me. The turnout in the by-elections was low. This is the result of sympathy and hard work of my husband. My husband made a promise. I will try to complete it."

Rutuja Latke later alleged BJP had no sympathy and said that if they had any, they would not have filled the form.

"If BJP had any sympathy, they would not have filled the form earlier. Votes met by NOTA belong to BJP...A survey was conducted before the elction and they knew that they were losing hence they withdrew the nomination of their candidate," Latke said.

She also mentioned that there will be no kind of celebrations for the registered victory in Andheri East bypolls.

With the counting of votes in 19 rounds, Latke has won the seat with 66,247 votes with 12,776 votes for NOTA in Assembly bypolls of 2022 in Maharashtra.

Latke is a former Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) employe who quit the BMC following the death of her husband. Her candidature remained unopposed in the election.

The counting of votes in Odisha and Telangana constituency are currently underway.

So far, TRS candidate Koosukuntla Prabhakar Reddy is leading in Telangana with a margin of 3952 votes with BJP's Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy trailing.

In Odisha, BJP's Suryabanshi Suraj is leading with a margin of 7,661 votes in Raits Dhamnagar constituency with Biju Janata Dal's Abanti Das trailing behind.