Mumbai: Despite an impressive performance in the recently concluded general elections, the Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) – a triparty alliance between the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party – has not been able to get its act together in Maharashtra. Its state legislators have cross-voted in the Maharashtra legislative council election, causing the defeat of one of its candidates.
Of the 11 seats in the upper house that voting was held for on Friday (July 12), nine have been won by the ruling Mahayuti – which comprises the BJP, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena – and two by the opposition MVA.
The biennial election, necessitated as the six-year term of 11 members of the House expires at the end of this month, saw an embarrassing turn of events. While the MLAs of both the Sharad Pawar NCP and Thackeray Sena seem to have stayed within the party line, it is the Congress MLAs – at least seven to eight of them – who seem to have cross voted.
This cross-voting cost the MVA one of the three seats it had contested. Sitting MLC Jayant Patil of the Peasants and Workers’ Party of India, who was backed by Sharad Pawar’s NCP, lost in the MLC election.
The BJP fielded a total of five candidates: Pankaja Munde, Yogesh Tilekar, Parinay Phuke, Amit Gorkhe and Sadabhau Khot. The Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena nominated former MP Krupal Tumane and Bhavana Gawali, and Ajit Pawar’s NCP fielded Rajesh Vitekar and Shivajirao Garje.
All Mahayuti candidates won.
Pradnya Satav of the Congress and Milind Narvekar of Thackeray’s Sena managed to secure an adequate number of votes and were elected.
Each candidate required at least 23 votes to win a seat in the council. The results indicate that six to seven Congress MLAs voted for Mahayuti candidates. Even smaller parties appear to have sided with the Mahayuti’s candidates.
While it is unclear who among the Congress voted for the ruling parties’ candidates, the absence of at least three MLAs from a party dinner meeting a night before the election raised eyebrows. The three MLAs are Zeeshan Siddique, Sanjay Jagtap and Jitesh Antapurkar.
Since the Congress pitched only one candidate, of the 37 MLAs the Congress has in the lower house (the legislative assembly), clear directions were given to its MLAs to pass on surplus votes in favour of Milind Narvekar of the Thackeray Sena. As a result, Narvekar got 22 first preference votes.
The recent victory is seen as a major gain for deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. Since the BJP and its allies performed poorly in the general elections, there have been fights simmering among the allies.
“We have received not only our own votes but also those from the MVA to make us victorious. This is a positive sign for us in the upcoming assembly elections,” Fadnavis claimed soon after the results.
This is not the first time that MVA MLAs have cross-voted. A similar pattern was observed in the 2022 council elections too.
