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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Tanweer Alam, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

December 3, 2024

Siddharth Varadarajan

In Markadwadi village in Maharashtra’s Solapur, villagers say they have always voted for Uttamrao Jankar regardless of which party he aligns with. “In the years when Jankar did not contest, they voted for his chosen candidate,” Sukanya Shantha writes, adding that this is why its residents were surprised when Jankar received a mere 843 of the 1,905 votes polled here during the assembly elections as opposed to the BJP’s Ram Satpute. Perplexed, they decided to hold a ‘repoll’ of their own using paper ballots – but were denied permission from the tehsildar, denied a polling booth from the returning officer and ultimately stalled in their effort by the police, even as Jankar, who won from the Malshiras seat this village is in, announced his support. Markadwadi’s residents have since abandoned their repoll plan but the response of the official establishment raises the obvious question: what are they afraid of?

A local court in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh has given the ‘Muslim side’ one week to complete its arguments in a case filed by Hindutva activists against the Jama Masjid