Maharashtra MLC Polls: Mahayuti wins all 9 seats it contested; MVA bags 2 with Uddhav aide getting place
BJP candidate Parinay Fuke after winning the MLC election at Vidhan Bhavan in Mumbai.
| Photo Credit: Emmanual Yogini
After two years, once again, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) legislators have cross-voted to defeat one of their candidates in the Maharashtra Legislative Council (MLC) election. This time, sitting MLC member Jayant Patil of the Peasants and Workers’ Party of India (PWPI), who was backed by Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) lost.
There were a dozen candidates in the fray for 11 seats of the Upper House — nine of them from the ruling Mahayuti alliance, two from MVA and one MVA-backed nominee. The 288-seat Assembly has 274 members and each candidate required a minimum of 23 votes to secure a berth.
Viewed as a precursor to the Assembly election due later this year, it was a clean sweep for the ruling Mahayuti alliance.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) fielded five candidates — Pankaja Munde, Yogesh Tilekar, Parinay Phuke, Amit Gorkhe and Sadabhau Khot. The Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena nominated former Member of Parliament Krupal Tumane and Bhavana Gawali, and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) fielded Rajesh Vitekar and Shivajirao Garje.
From the opposition, only two candidates — Pradnya Satav of the Congress and Milind Narvekar of Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) — secured adequate votes to get elected.
In the run-up to Friday’s poll, speculations were rife about crossvoting from either side. This led to the BJP, Shiv Sena, NCP and Shiv Sena (UBT) to take their respective teams to different luxury hotels across Mumbai. Only Congress and NCP (SP) chose not to get their legislators “checked-in”. But the Congress had called a dinner meeting on the eve of the election in which three legislators remained absent, raising eyebrows over possibility of crossvoting. The three MLAs were Zeeshan Siddique, Sanjay Jagtap and Jitesh Antapurkar. Of them, only Mr. Jagtap had informed the party leadership of his unavailability.
Sources within the MVA told Today News 24 that they had anticipated three to four Congress MLAs having close ties with the ruling alliance to vote for the rival coalition candidates. However, they were hopeful of up to eight votes from the Mahayuti MLAs. Of the 37 MLAs the Congress has in the Lower House, directions were given to pass on the surplus votes in Mr. Narvekar’s favour.
The results indicate that six to seven Congress MLAs voted for non-MVA candidates as Ms. Satav bagged 25 first preference votes against the fixed quota of 30 and Mr. Narvekar got 22 first preference votes.
A majority of the political outfits having single-digit representations too seemed to have voted in favour of Mahayuti.
“Today, we witnessed that we received not only our own votes but also those from the MVA to make us victorious. This indicates that we will win Maharashtra Assembly election as well,” Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said after the results.
“We were confident of winning nine seats. There were some people who were speaking otherwise, who have been proven wrong. I thank all MLAs, including the others who voted in our favour. This victory is just a trailer ahead of the upcoming State polls. Several schemes introduced in the Budget will benefit every family and I am confident that the Mahayuti alliance will get re-elected,” Mr. Shinde said while referring to the June 2022 rebellion he had led to be BJP’s ally.
While voting was underway on Friday, through a letter to the Returning Officer, the Congress objected to BJP MLA from Kalyan East Ganpat Gaikwad being allowed to cast his vote. The letter referred to Section 62 (5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 that states that “no person shall vote at any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police…”
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut and NCP (SP) leader Anil Deshmukh also objected. “Even I had moved the court to seek permission to cast my vote (during the 2022 council election), I was disallowed. Now, Mr. Gaikwad is permitted. This is how BJP misuses power,” Mr. Deshmukh said. Apart from him, NCP (SP) leader and former minister Nawab Malik was denied permission.
Later during the day, the Election Commission allowed Mr. Ganpat to exercise his franchise.
The biennial election was necessitated as the six-year term of 11 members of the Upper House will expire on July 27.
