Snatches 6th seat from MVA in Maharashtra, BJP-backed Kartikeya Sharma defeats Cong’s Ajay Maken in Hry
The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra suffered a massive setback on Saturday, as the BJP sprang a nasty surprise on its main constituent Shiv Sena by snatching the sixth seat from the latter and winning two other seats in the Rajya Sabha polls held on Thursday.
Pulling off an unthinkable feat, the BJP in Maharashtra bagged one additional RS seat, as its candidate Dhananjay Mahadik trounced the Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Pawar in an election battle that witnessed a majority of Independents, MLAs from smaller parties — who are actually the supporters of the MVA Government — voting in favour of Mahadik instead of (Sanjay) Pawar.
While in Haryana, in a jolt to the Congress, the BJP’s Krishan Lal Panwar and the saffron party-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma were declared elected for the two Rajya Sabha seats, after a high drama over allegations of violations of polling rules that delayed the counting by more than seven hours. The counting of votes in State began past midnight and the results were announced after 2 am on Saturday. According to Election Commission officials, Congress candidates Ajay Maken did not get enough votes. The party said one of its MLAs cross-voted while the vote of an MLA was declared invalid.
Congress MLA and the party’s authorised polling agent BB Batra said while the vote of a party MLA was declared invalid, MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi cross-voted for Sharma, a media baron who had entered the poll as an Independent candidate supported by the BJP and its ally JJP.
Friday’s development in Maharashtra brought back the grim memories of the 1998 Rajya Sabha polls when the Congress’ official candidate Ram Pradhan was defeated due to cross-voting indulged in by the Congress MLAs. Senior leader Sharad Pawar, who was then with the Congress, was blamed for Pradhan’s defeat, as he had opposed the latter’s candidate.
Mahadik scored a comfortable victory over Pawar at the end of the second round of counting of votes. While Mahadik polled 41 votes, Pawar secured 33 votes. The minimum quota of votes required for winning the Rajya Sabha seat was 40.58 votes.
The BJP’s Union Minister Piyush Goyal, it’s Kisan Morcha’s national general secretary Dr Anil Bonde and party’s State spokesperson and former Kolhapur MP Dhananjay Mahadik romped home in the RS polls. Goyal and Bonde, both BJP candidates, got the highest votes at 48 each, while Mahadik secured 41 votes.
The NCP’s Praful Patel secured 43 votes, while the Congress Imran Pratapgadi got 44 votes Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut managed to get 41 votes.
While the Shiv Sena is in the process of analysing the contributory factors for its second candidate Pawar’s defeat, the BJP -led by former Chief Minister and current leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Devendra Fadnavis -outmanoeuvred the ruling MVA by winning one extra seat in the RS polls.
The election for the sixth seat turned out to be the highlight of the Rajya Sabha elections, which exposed the lack of coordination among the MVA constituents - Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, leading to the defeat of the Shiv Sena’s second candidate.
In all 284 MLAs out of the total 288 MLAs in the State Assembly cast valid votes in Friday’s polls. The MVA -- which on paper enjoyed the support of 168 MLAs (the number got reduced from 170 to 168 after the NCP’s two incarcerated Ministers Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik were refused temporary bail to participate in the RS polls)-- could have in the normal course easily won four out of the six RS seats, while the BJP was assured of two seats.
What happened in the end was: the BJP walked away with three seats, while the ruling MVA constituents - Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress - won one seat each in the polls.
With the rejection of the pleas by Deshmukh and Malik, the strength of the ruling MVA has come down to 168 MLAs --- Shiv Sena 55 (one MLA Ramesh Latke, died in Dubai recently ), NCP 51 ( minus the votes of Deshmukh and Malik), Congress 44, smaller parties/groups 10 and 8 Independents.
The BJP, which has a combined strength of 113 seats as against an approximate strength of 123 needed for winning three seats, managed to muster 10 to 12 seats from outside to win the third seat.
The Shiv Sena, which had fielded two candidates, ensured the victory of Sanjay Raut elected, while second candidate Sanjay Pawar lost.
Informed sources said that at least 10 to 12 MLAs from the MVA fold -mostly Independents, who were supposed to have voted in favour of the Sena candidate, passed on their votes to the Opposition BJP, contributing to the victory of the BJP’s third candidate Dhananjay Mahadik.
On its part, the Shiv Sena has blamed the smaller parties and Independents for not voting in favour of its second candidate, despite assurances to the contrary.
Shiv Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said that the MVA did not get three votes from the Hitendra Thakur-led Maha Vikas Aghadi and some independent members like Sanjay Patil and Devendra Bhuyar.
"There were "horses" that were ready to be "sold". It’s not the mandate of the people but the mandate of horse-trading," he said.
Raut also accused the Election Commission of India for favouring the BJP. "The Election Commission made our one vote invalid. We objected to two votes of Sudhir Mungantiwar (BJP) and Independent MLA (Ravi Rana) but no action was taken on that. The Election Commission favoured them. EC should have acted in an impartial manner," he said.
Meanwhile, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said that he was not surprised at the result.
"I am not shocked to see the results. If you see the votes polled by every candidate of NCP, Shiv Sena and Congress, they received the votes as per the quota. Only Praful Patel (of NCP) received one extra vote and I know where it came from. That was not MVA’s vote, it was from the opposite side," Pawar said.
"There was a "big gap" for the six seats but the MVA made all efforts to bridge it. I must say Fadnavis has succeeded in pulling off a miracle of winning an extra RS seat despite the lack of adequate numbers," Pawar said.
Having won one extra seat in the RS polls, the BJP is going whole hog into the June 20 Maharashtra Legislative Council polls for 10 seats.
For the 10 MLC seats, the NCP has put up two candidates - Khadse and Nimbalkar, while alliance partner Shiv Sena has nominated Sachin Ahir and Amasha Padvi as its candidates. The Congress, the third ruling MVA has fielded its former Minister Chandrakant Handore and Mumbai party President Bhai Jagtap for the polls.
The over-ambitious Opposition BJP, which has tasted blood in the RS polls, has fielded as many as six candidates ---current leader of the Opposition in the Upper House Pravin Darekar, Ram Shinde, Shrikant Bharatiya, Uma Kapre and Prasad Lad, while it has offered its support to Independent MLA Sadabhau. It remains to be seen if it will walk away with the maximum number of seats from the 10 MLC seats for which elections are being held.
