With the BJP losing its bastion of Kasba Peth in Pune city to the Congress in the recently-held Assembly bypoll, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar said the development indicated that winds of change were blowing across the country. The former Union minister was speaking to reporters at Baramati, his hometown in Pune district. “BJP’s defeat in the Kasba Peth Assembly bypoll proves that people are considering an alternative. Winds of change are blowing across the country,” he said.

The BJP on Thursday failed to retain the Kasba Peth Assembly seat, its stronghold for nearly three decades, as Congress candidate Ravindra Dhangekar defeated the saffron party nominee Hemant Rasane in a keenly contested bypoll, which had become a prestige battle between the ruling coalition and the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). Girish Bapat, the current BJP Lok Sabha MP from Pune, won the prestigious seat five times till 2019. The bypoll was held on February 26 and votes were counted on Thursday.