In a development that went on expected lines, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and eight others were declared elected unopposed to the State Legislative Council on Thursday.
Uddhav, who was not a member of either of the Houses of the State Legislature when he was sworn in as the Chief Minister on November 28 last year, was elected unopposed to the State Legislative Council 13 days prior to the six-month deadline prescribed by the Constitution for his becoming a legislator.
Apart from Uddhav, eight others who were elected the State Council unopposed were: Council Deputy Chairperson Neelam Gorhe of the Shiv Sena, four candidates from the BJP - Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil, Gopichand Padalkar, Praveen Datke and Ramesh Karad, NCP's Shashikant Shinde and Amol Mitkari and Congress’ Rajesh Rathod.
An informal announcement about the election of Uddhav and eight other candidates to the Upper House of the State Legislature came a day after BJP’s Sandeep Lele and Ajit Gopchade NCP’s Kiran Pawaskar and Shivajirao Garje — withdrew their nominations, while the papers of Independent candidate Shehbaz Rathod were rejected as invalid during the scrutiny.
Ahead of the withdrawal of nominations, the Opposition BJP faced an embarrassment of sorts as it had to replace its officially declared candidate Ajit Gopchhade with Ramesh Karad, who had also filed his papers as a "dummy" candidate.