The election to Maharashtra legislative council, scheduled to take place on July 12, is going to be an interesting contest as 12 candidates are in fray for 11 vacant seats.
These members of the legislative council will be elected by members of the legislative assembly, the lower house.
The BJP has fielded five candidates while the Shiv Sena and the NCP have fielded two each. The Congress and the Shiv Sena UBT have fielded one each while the Peasants and Workers Party has also fielded one candidate. NCP Sharad Pawar has announced its support to the PWP candidate.
The BJP candidates in fray are former state minister Pankaja Munde, who recently lost Lok Sabha elections from Beed constituency; former state minister Parinay Fuke; former legislator Yogesh Tilekar; former minister Sadabhau Khot and Amit Gorkhe. Of these five, three are from OBC category, one is a Maratha and one is from Matang community in the scheduled castes category.
It is clear that the BJP has made an all out efforts to woo the OBC communities by fielding three OBC candidates including Munde. The BJP generally does not give legislative council or Rajya Sabha tickets to those who lose an election. However, the state leadership of the party has made an exception this time by giving a ticket to Munde who had lost her assembly seat in 2019 and also Lok Sabha seat in the recent parliament elections.
The BJP has the ability to get all its candidates elected as it has 103 MLAs of its own and also has the support of independent MLAs.
To win in this legislative council election, a candidate must get 23 first preference votes from the MLAs.
The Shiv Sena has fielded Krupal Tumane and Bhavana Gawli, both former MPs who were denied tickets for Lok sabha. Both of them can get elected as the party led by Eknath Shinde has adequate number votes from their own MLAs and independents
NCP has fielded Shivajirao Garje and Rajesh Vitekar. Both would require 46 votes to get elected but NCP has 41 MLA votes, so it remains to be seen as to how Ajit Pawar manages the additional 5-6 votes for his candidates.
Congress has fielded Pradnya Satav, wife of late Congress MP Rajiv Satav. The party has the required number of votes to get Satav elected .
The Shiv Sena UBT has fielded Milind Narvekar, a long time trusted aide of Uddhav Thackeray. And, PWP has fielded its president Jayant Patil. PWP has the support of NCP Sharad Pawar so those 15-16 votes will go to Jayant Patil. Similarly, the Shiv Sena UBT has 16 votes which will go to Milind Narvekar. Thus either Patil or Narvekar could fall short of seven votes in order to get elected. The additional votes from Congress can go either to Patil or to Narvekar to make one of them win.
So it will be interesting to see who among Jayant Patil or Milind Narvekar emerges as winner on July 12.
