In the Maharashtra Assembly elections, 11 candidates are in the fray for Akot Assembly seat. Voting for this assembly seat along with the entire state will be held on November 20 while the results will come on November 23. This seat comes under Akola district and Lok Sabha constituency. In 2019, BJP’s Prakash Gunwantrao Bharsakle had won the election from Akot seat. The main contest here is between BJP and Congress. Prakash Bharsakale started his political journey as a Shiv Sena worker. In 1990, Prakash won the election as a Shiv Sena candidate from Dariyapur area. Bharsakale left Shiv Sena and joined Congress in 2005.
In 2005, he won the by-election from Dariyapur seat as a Congress candidate. In 2009, Prakash left the Congress and contested the elections as an independent, but lost the elections. In the year 2012, Prakash Bharsakale had joined BJP. Prakash was elected as a BJP candidate from Akot in the 2014 and 2019 assembly elections. That is, he has led Dariyapur from 1990 to 2009 and Akot assembly constituency from 2014 till now. 72-year-old Prakash Bharsakale was born on 20 January 1964 in Kalyan, Maharashtra. His wife’s name is Nalini Bharsakale and children’s names are Rupali and Vijay. His residence is Kalash Apartment Akot.
Akot assembly constituency is one of the five assembly constituencies located in Akola district. It is a part of Akola parliamentary constituency. This seat has been in existence since 1962. Initially, Congress had dominance in this Dalit-Muslim voter dominated seat but since 1990, Congress has not been able to make a comeback here. In 1990, Shiv Sena wrested this seat from Congress for the first time. After this, Shiv Sena and BJP dominated here. Here Prakash Amdekar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi also plays an important role in victory and defeat.
Understand the caste equation of Akot assembly seat
According to 2019 data, there are total 2 lakh 85 thousand 150 voters in Akol Assembly. Dalit and Muslim voters prove to be important for victory or defeat on this seat. If Dalit, Muslim and tribal voters are included in this seat, their number becomes almost 50 percent. Here 16 percent are Dalit voters and 26 percent are Muslim voters. Whereas the number of tribal voters is around 7 percent.
What will be the election environment of 2024?
There has been a triangular contest on this seat for the last few years. In such a situation, a triangular contest is expected again. BJP can contest this seat from Mahayuti because the current MLA from here is Prakash Bharsakle of BJP. It remains to be seen whose account this seat goes to in Mahavikas Aghadi. If Congress fields its candidate from here, then to win, it will have to stop the transfer of Dalit and Muslim votes to the deprived Bahujan Aghadi. If the opposition alliance Mahavikas Aghadi prevents the division of Muslim and Dalit votes, then MVA can come back on the track of victory from here. At the same time, BJP would like that MVA and Prakash Ambedkar’s party should be divided and the victory should go to BJP.
