In a massive moral booster to the 'Mahayuti' ahead of the assembly polls, the ruling coalition swept all the nine seats it contested in the biennial elections for 11 Legislative Council seats here on Friday. The Opposition MVA suffered a setback as a candidate supported by Sharad Pawar's party lost.
Announced this evening, results of the high-stakes polls gave five seats to the Bharatiya Janata Party and two each to the Shiv Sena of Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party. All three are constituents of the Mahayuti alliance that has been bruised in the recent Lok Sabha polls, managing a tally of only 17 out of Maharashtra's 48 seats.
While Milind Narvekar, a close associate of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray from the MVA, and Congress candidate Pradnya Satav showed their victory in the election conducted Friday, Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party-backed Jayant Patil lost the election.
The electoral college for these polls constituted the 288-member legislative assembly, currently standing at 274 members. Each winning candidate required a minimum of 23 votes.
BJP holds the maximum share in the assembly with 103 members, followed by Shiv Sena 38, NCP 42, Congress 37, Shiv Sena UBT 15, and NCP SP 10.
While the BJP fielded as many as five candidates, including former minister Pankaja Munde, Shiv Sena followed with two while NCP too fielded two. Congress renominated Satav while Shiv Sena UBassertTrue filed Narvekar. NCP's SP made a decision not to field acandidate but supported the nomination of PWP's Jayant Patil.
The council elections defied the whip of the party with some Congress MLAs cross-voting and Satav getting 25 first preference votes and Narvekar 22.
Chief Minister Eknath Shinde termed the sweeping victory of Mahayuti alliance in the council polls, as a precursor of the assembly elections slated for October. Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis claimed that Mahayuti obtained votes not only from its coalition members but also from MVA legislators.
Describing the alliance as one unit, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar said because of this coordination, the candidates of Mahayuti won because of better teamwork.
Speaking ahead, Ajit Pawar also expressed confidence in the prospects of Mahayuti for success in the forthcoming assembly polls, though NCP performed mixed in the Lok Sabha elections.
That's the bottom line: the Maharashtra legislative council elections underlined the resurgence of the Mahayuti alliance and set the scene for a competitive assembly election later this year.
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