Months ahead of the Maharashtra assembly polls, the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi has faced a setback against the ruling Mahayuti comprising of BJP, Shiv Sena and NCP-Ajit Pawar. While the Mahayuti bagged nine out of the 11 Legislative Council seats, the MVA’s move of fielding an extra candidate to hurt the NDA fell flat on its face. What aided to the misery of the MVA is that seven Congress MLAs cross-voted for the Mahayuti candidate.
The MVA was riding high on its Lok Sabha election victory where it won 30 of 48 Lok Sabha seats. However, it faced a crushing setback in the Legislative Council polls which was touted as the semifinal ahead of the assembly polls.
The opposition alliance triggered the election by nominating an extra candidate beyond their available votes, possibly aiming to gain from cross-voting by ruling coalition MLAs, but it appears they ended up losing votes instead.
The Maharashtra Assembly has a strength of 288 MLAs. However, due to the resginations of certain MLAs, the current strength is 274. Therefore, each MLC candidate required 23 first-preference votes to win the polls. The Mahayuti has 201 MLAs, sufficient for the victory of eight candidates and it needed the support of six opposition MLAs to make its ninth candidate victorious.
On the other hand, the MVA -Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) – had the support of 67 MLAs, sufficient for the victory of two candidates and it needed the support of two MLAs from the ruling party to make its third candidate win. Six MLAs including an independent were neutral as they did not choose a side.
The MVA was hopeful of getting support from the MLAs of the NCP-Ajit Pawar faction. Even Sharad Pawar faction’s MLA Rohit Pawar had earlier claimed to have been in touch of 15 NCP-Ajit Pawar MLAs.
The third candidate backed by the Sharad Pawar was Jayant Patil who is from the Peasants and Workers Party. Patil lost because he did not get the required number of votes.