Nearly five Independent lawmakers who backed chief minister Uddhav Thackeray when he won his first trust vote in the Maharashtra assembly may have supported the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Rajya Sabha elections, leaders of the Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi said after the surprise defeat of Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Pawar.
The ruling MVA coalition had fielded parliamentarian Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar (both from Shiv Sena), former Union minister Praful Patel (NCP) and Imran Pratapgarhi (Congress) against the BJP’s Union minister Piyush Goyal, former minister Anil Bonde and Dhanjay Mahadik, a former MP.
The BJP, which has 106 legislators in the assembly, secured the support of 123 MLAs. This means the opposition party secured 17 additional votes that it needed to win its third seat, that is Mahadik.
The MVA, on the other hand, which came to power with the support of 169 MLAs in November 2019, got 162. It could get only 12 votes from small parties and independents in addition to 150 MLAs of the three parties.
In the 288-member state assembly, the Sena has 55 MLAs, Nationalist Congress Party has 53, and Congress and BJP have 44 and 106, respectively. There are 13 independents, and there is one vacancy due to the death of Sena MLA Ramesh Latke. Two of NCP MLAs — Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh — are in jail.
MVA leaders said they believe that at least five votes, that of Independents supporting the government, appeared to have moved away from its camp. The ruling coalition had secured 169 votes during the trust vote when it came to power in 2019. One Sena MLA Ramesh Latke died earlier this year.
“Out of 169, two NCP MLAs (Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik were in jail so they could not vote for our candidates. We got 162 votes which means we got five less than our calculations,” said a senior NCP leader.
The MVA has 150 legislators (excluding two NCP legislators Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, who have been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in separate cases). It needed at least 14 more votes to win its fourth seat (Sanjay Pawar).
Five candidates were declared elected in the first round of counting: Union minister Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde (BJP), Praful Patel (NVCP), Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena) and Imran Pratapgarhi (Congress).
Goyal and Bonde received 48 votes each while Pratapgarhi won 44 votes. Praful Patel bagged 43 while Raut got 41 votes.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, who managed to retain his seat, initially said that four legislators did not vote for them, and added that “we know who they are.” He later named six Independents from the ruling coalition’s camp, who are suspected to have supported the BJP.
Raut underlined that Mahadik only managed to win based on the second preference votes.
“No legislator elected on our party nominations has defected. These are Independents, there are inducements, there are central investigation agencies,” Raut charged, adding that the victory had come due to the misuse of the central agencies and the Election Commission (EC).
However, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has claimed that the defeat will not jeopardise the future of the MVA government. “The MVA got all its votes but some independents voted for the BJP. One vote of independent supporting BJP came to us,” he said.
Before the counting, which was held up for nearly nine hours due to cross complaints seeking disqualification of votes, started at 2am, the Election Commission overruled the returning officer and cancelled the vote of Shiv Sena legislator Suhas Kande after reviewing video footage of the voting process.