BJP, allies sweep Maharashtra Legislative Council polls, win 9 of 11 seats
candidates for the Maharashtra Legislative Council polls won on Friday by engineering a cross-voting from among the opposition ranks.
Five MLCs of the BJP, two from the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and two from the NCP (Ajit) won the elections despite being short of votes. There were 12 candidates in fray for 11 MLC seats.
The MLC elections were seen as a precursor to the assembly polls and a litmus test for the ruling parties as to whether they would be able to keep their flock together after the drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls. Barring the Congress and the NCP-SP, all the other political parties had kept their MLAs ensconced in different hotels two days prior to the voting.
All the BJP's five candidates — Pankaja Munde, Parinay Fuke, Yogesh Tilekar, Amit Gorkhe and Sadabhau Khot won. The NCP's Rajesh Vitekar and party general secretary Shivajirao Garje along with the Shiv Sena's Bhawana Gawali and Krupal Tumane also won.
The Congress has 37 votes and its candidate Pragya Satav got 25 votes and won. The party had 12 votes left which were supposed to help its allies — UBT's Milind Narverkar and Peasants and Workers Party's (PWP) Jayant Patil. Narwekar got 24 votes, whereas Patil had got 12 votes and lost.
However, at least 7 to 8 Congress MLAs have cross-voted for the ruling party MLAs, the beneficiary being NCP (Ajit) and Shiv Sena (Shinde).
«We had less votes and so did Shiv Sena, however, we both got more votes, five more than we had,» said Ajit Pawar after his two candidates won.
According to the ruling party
