Kopri-Pachpakhadi Assembly Election Results 2024: Eknath Shinde 4.0 in this Thane seat! Kedar Dighe loses by huge margin

Chief Minister Eknath Shinde has won the Kopri-Pachpakhadi seat by securing more than 1.5 lakh votes. Shiv Sena (UBT) candidate Kedar Dighe has lost the Sena vs Sena battle by a margin of more than 1.20 lakh votes. 

Dighe could manage to poll only around 38,230 votes on this seat, as per the Election Commission (EC) data. Kedar Dighe is the nephew of Shinde's mentor and Shiv Sena strongman late Anand Dighe. 

Shinde's victory in Kopri-Pachpakhadi has not only cemented his standing as the custodian of the real Shiv Sena but also that of his mentor Anand Dighe's legacy. With this, Eknath Shinde is back for the fourth term as MLA with a larger victory margin compared to the 2019 assembly polls.

This was the first time that Shinde faced the electorate after the split in Shiv Sena and the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in 2022. 

In this Sena vs Sena battle, Shinde banked on development schemes and his cinematic tribute to the late Shiv Sena leader through the two Dharmaveer movies. Kedar Dighe, on the other hand, tried to reclaim his uncle's legacy and has long condemned Shinde for betraying the original ideals and principles of Shiv Sena. 

Even though Kedar has never been an MLA, his surname could resonate with the voters as Dighe was the Shiv Sena's unchallenged leader in Thane till his passing in 2001. Meanwhile, Shinde has emphasised the fact that he carries forward the legacy of Anand Dighe. Along with state capital Mumbai, the Shiv Sena founded by Balasaheb Thackeray first made inroads as a serious political party in the neighbouring Thane. 

The Kopri-Pachpakhadi contest is a crucial one for Shiv Sena (UBT) since no MVA constituent -- Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress, and NCP (SP) -- has any base left in the constituency. After the constituency was carved, Shinde won from here three times in 2009, 2014 and 2019 and his vote share rose with each election. On the other hand, the Congress has faced a consistent decline in its vote share in the assembly seat with every election. 

In the 2019 assembly elections, Shinde won the seat in a landslide with over 1.13 lakh votes in his kitty and a vote share of 65.36 per cent. Congress' Sanjay Ghadigaonkar was a distant second to Shinde with 24,197 votes and a vote share of 13.93 per cent.