Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel on Wednesday (October 28, 2026) called for introspection within the party, after the trends in the Maharashtra Legislative Council elections showed NCP to be trailing on the only seat allocated to it. “Today’s Vidhan Parishad election results serve as a definitive wake-up call. The time has come for urgent introspection to rebuild trust, realign our priorities, and fix our organisational structure,” he posted on his social media handle on X.

Earlier, the senior leadership, including Mr. Patel and Sunil Tatkare, had expressed dissatisfaction at the party being denied the Pune graduates’ seat. A part of the party’s leadership had felt that it had an advantage in Pune, as the seat was earlier held by the united NCP. During these elections, the BJP kept this seat for itself. The NCP and NCP-SP have a strong presence in Pune.

The tweet has brought to the fore the fault lines within the NCP after late leader Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar took over the reigns of the party. There have been clashes about the style of functioning of her son Parth Pawar, which has not gone down well with the senior leaders.

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar

In the seat-sharing talks for these MLC elections, the NCP was offered only one of the five seats. On Wednesday (October 28, 2026), the party was seen trailing in the seat of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, where its rival, the NCP Sharadchandra Pawar group was seen to be leading.

NCP-SP candidate Pratapsinh Patil left behind NCP’s Satish Chavan. The results for the seat were not declared on Wednesday, even as counting continued for the second consecutive day.