Maharashtra: NCP legislator claims Eknath Shinde’s revolt pre-planned, made moves during Rajya Sabha and MLC polls

The BJP bagged five seats while the MVA alliance partners shared the other five seats (NCP-2, Shiv Sena-2, Congress-1) in the Legislative Council polls on Monday.

“I was deputed as one of the polling agents for the state Legislative Council elections held on Monday. I had witnessed that Aaditya Thackeray and Eknath Shinde of Shiv Sena had come together to cast their vote after all their legislators had voted. There was no sign of differences between them and within hours, Shinde headed to Surat,” said the NCP legislator on the condition of anonymity.

“All political parties had prepared their strategy for the elections of the state legislative council and those ensuring that the voting went as per the plan were voting last from their party to ensure their and their alliance partners’ candidates get elected,” he said.

“Interestingly, the results of the council elections revealed that the cross-voting was pre-planned as none of the legislators showed signs of rebelling against the party,” the legislator added.

“Going by the strategy of the Congress, 29 of its supporting legislators were asked to give first preference to its candidate Chandrakant Handore while 19 legislators were asked to vote for Bhai Jagtap. But Handore got 22 votes and Jagtap got 19 votes in the first round,” he said.

Seven Congress legislators cross-voted and Handore lost the election in the second round of the counting of votes, he added.

“Similarly, 12 legislators from Shiv Sena cross-voted and instead of giving their vote to candidates of alliance partners as decided by the party leadership, they voted for the BJP candidate,” he said, implying that Shinde was behind the move.

The NCP legislator said that when Shiv Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar lost in the Rajya Sabha polls, the blame was unfairly put on Independent legislators for not sticking to their promises.

“If the Rajya Sabha election results are studied in the present situation, then it is clear that it was not the Independent legislators but the Shiv Sena legislators who led to the loss of its party candidate Sanjay Pawar,” he added.