NCP leading in Pune Municipal Corporation

Pune, Feb 17: Prospects of a hung house loomed large over the 152-member Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) with the front-runner NCP winning only 25 seats out of the 76 results officially declared so far.

NCP is followed by MNS, which had won 17 seats by 2 PM.

The official party position at 2 PM was: NCP 25, Congress 14, BJP 12, MNS 17, Shiv Sena 5, RPI 2 and independent 1. Deputy Mayor Prasanna Jagtap (Congress) was defeated by Shrikant Jagtap of BJP by 2,515 votes. Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal too lost to his BJP rival Ganesh Bidkar.

NCP and Congress are fighting the Pune polls without an alliance, against the "Mahayuti" (grand alliance) of Shiv Sena, BJP and RPI.

A highlight of the results so far is the defeat of three Congress candidates who are close to scam-tainted Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi: Sangeeta Tiwari, Amit Bagul and Avinash Bagve.

In a setback for Shiv Sena, its member and former PMC standing committee chairman Shyam Deshpande was defeated by MNS's Kishore Shinde.

PTI