All 285 MLAs who were eligible for voting exercised their franchise for Rajya Sabha election for six seats in Maharashtra by 3.30 pm on Friday. The crucial, neck-to-neck contest was necessitated as the BJP fielded three candidates while Shiv Sena put up two and Congress and NCP one each.
Thus, there were seven candidates in the fray against six vacancies. The BJP fielded Union Commerce minister Piyush Goyal, former State Minister Anil Bonde and former MP Dhananjay Mahadik.
The Sena fielded Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar. The NCP fielded Praful Patel while Congress fielded Imran Pratapgarhi. There were objections to some votes from both the Maha Vikas Aghadi (Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance) and the BJP.
The BJP claimed that Yashomati Thakur (Congress), Jitendra Awhad (NCP) and Suhas Kande (Shiv Sena) violated the rule of showing ballot paper to the authorized agent. "Each voter has to display his vote to the authorized agent from a distance. But Thakur and Awhad handed their ballot papers to their respective agents, while Kande displayed his ballot paper to the agents of two different parties, " claimed Parag Alavani, BJP MLA and polling agent.
While PWD minister Ashok Chavan said Congress's polling agent Amar Rajurkar objected to the vote cast by Sudhir Mungantiwar (BJP) as he handed his ballot paper to Ashish Shelar, the BJP polling agent.
Industries minister Subhash Desai said all objections were ruled out by the election officials. The quota of first preference votes needed by each candidate to win is 41 as the total number of voters came down to 285 from 288.
NCP leaders Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh, currently in jail, were denied one-day bail to vote by the courts. Shiv Sena MLA Ramesh Latke died recently. Laxman Jagtap and Mukta Tilak, both BJP MLAs who are unwell, came to the Vidhan Bhavan in an ambulance, while Mahendra Dalvi, Shiv Sena MLA, came with help of a walker.
Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, who himself was not a voter as he is a member of the Legislative Council, expressed confidence that all four candidates of the MVA will win. State Congress president Nana Patole and senior party leaders Ashok Chavan and Prithviraj Chavan said the party had not approached AIMIM to seek its two votes. "They decided to vote for us on their own," the Congress leaders said.
(With PTI inputs)
