Minister of State for Finance and Energy in the former Democratic Front government in Maharashtra Rajendra Mulak, who lost the October 15 Assembly election from Kamptee seat here, secured the highest number of votes among his Congress colleagues in Vidarbha.
Mulak secured 86,753 votes while losing to Chandrashekhar Bawankule of BJP who got 1,26,755 votes.
Sunil Kedar, the lone face saver for Congress in Vidarbha and winner among 12 seats in Nagpur district mustered 86,630 votes.
Former Mayor Vikas Thakre (Nagpur-West) of Congress got 60,098 votes.
Mulak also occupies fourth spot among Congress bigwigs in Maharashtra in terms of votes polled by them.
He is preceded by Harshwardhan Patil (Indapur) 94,227, Satej Patil (Kolhapur-South) 96,961 and P N Patil (Karvir), who polled 1,60,288 votes.
Reluctant to contest from the new Kamptee seat, Mulak, whose father Bhausaheb Mulak was also a minister in Maharashtra, was rather keen on Nagpur-West seat and had started preparations long back.
Though he is from Nagpur South-West and had earlier represented Umrer constituency, but since Umrer was made a reserved (SC) constituency, he had to look for a new seat.
For the last few months, he was visiting various areas in Nagpur-West, but the party gave him ticket from Kamptee.
Mulak, a member of Upper House in state Legislature, got elected (on January 2, 2010) from Nagpur local bodies' constituency. His six year term will expire on January 1, 2016.
