Mumbai,  On expected lines, the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) supported Congress candidate Jayashree Jadhav swept the Kolhapur North constituency by-election, the results of which were announced on Saturday.

She defeated her main rival, Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Satyajit Kadam with a comfortable margin of nearly 18,900 votes in the elections held two days ago.

The bypoll for the erstwhile royal seat of the Chhatrapatis was necessitated following the death of Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav who succumbed to Covid-19 in December 2021.

Top leaders of the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress hailed Jayashree Jadhav's victory saying that the people of Kolhapur had rejected outright the BJP's divisive politics of Hindutva and hatred vis-a-vis the MVA's all-inclusive developmental agenda.