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The February 27 biennial elections to the 6 Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra is going to be a question of how to maintain their existence in the upper house of the parliament before the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), more so for the Sharad Pawar led faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray.
Given the split in both the NCP and the Shiv Sena, it will be an uphill task for both the Sharad Pawar led faction and the Uddhav Thackeray led faction to retain their respective lone seat that will go to polls on February 27. Their MVA ally, the Congress can comfortably retain their lone seat. The quota of votes needed to win in this RS poll for Maharashtra is 42 votes.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday announced the poll schedule for the 56 seats spread across 15 state’s that will go to polls on February 27.
As per the poll schedule announced by the ECI – the last date for filing of nomination papers is February 15, scrutiny of nomination papers will be taken up on February 16, last date for withdrawal of nomination papers is February 20, and date of polling is February 27, counting of votes will be taken up after the polling is over.
The 15 states and the seats are as follows – Andhra Pradesh (3), Bihar (6), Chhattisgarh (1), Gujarat (4), Haryana (1), Himachal Pradesh (1), Karnataka (4), Madhya Pradesh (5), Maharashtra (6), Telangana (3), Uttar Pradesh (10), Uttarakhand (1), West Bengal (5), Odisha (3) and Rajasthan (3).
Out of the 56 members retiring in April – 50 are due to retire on April 2 and 3 each from Odisha and Rajasthan are due to retire on April 3.
The party-wise break-up of the 6 retiring RS members from Maharashtra include – Union Minister for Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Narayan Rane (BJP), Vandana Chavan (NCP), Anil Desai (Shiv Sena), Prakash Javadekar (BJP), Kumar Ketkar (INC) and Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan (BJP).
Of the 6 RS MPs retiring in April – it will be difficult for Vandana Chavan (NCP) and Anil Desai (Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction) to retain their respective RS seats.
Considering the numerical strength of the respective political parties in the 288 member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (MLA) and considering the split in the NCP and the Shiv Sena, it will be an uphill task for the Sharad Pawar led NCP faction and the Thackeray faction to retain their respective lone seats in the upper house of the parliament.
The Shiv Sena has a strength of 56 MLAs in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, of which following the split – the Sena faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde claims to have support of 42 MLAs. Whereas, the SS-UBT faction led by former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray is reported to have support of 16 MLAs.
As against this, the NCP has a strength of 53 MLAs, of which the faction led by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar claims to have support of 24 to 30 MLAs. While the faction led by Sharad Pawar is reported to have the support of 23 MLAs.
In the case of both the NCP and Shiv Sena factions, the crucial question will be whose party whip will be followed from which of the two factions in the February 27 polls. The dispute of both the factions is pending before the Supreme Court of India (SC).
At least in the Shiv Sena case, Speaker Rahul Narvekar has ruled in favour of the Shinde faction upholding the appointment of Bharat Gogawale as the chief whip of the party. In such a case, it will be interesting to see whether Aaditya Thackeray follows the party whip issued by the Shinde faction or not.
Meanwhile, the apex court has set a deadline of February 15 for Speaker Rahul Narvekar to decide on the disqualification petitions against the NCP MLAs of the Ajit Pawar faction. The deadline comes just 12 days before the February 27 RS poll date.
Going by the political grapevine within the BJP, the party top brass has indicated to most of its sitting RS MPs and union ministers who are members of the upper house to begin preparing to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in April-May this year.
Union Minister for Social Justice and RPI-A leader Ramdas Athawale has already demanded 2 Lok Sabha seats to contest from the BJP. Given its unofficial directive to its sitting RS MPs, it is highly unlikely that the party may renominate Prakash Javadekar for the RS poll. It may however, make an exception to the rule for Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan who hails from Kerala.
For the Congress which has 45 MLAs in the lower house of the state legislature retaining its lone seat may not be much of a problem. However, sources within the Congress reveal that the party may not renominate its sitting MP Kumar Ketkar for the February 27 biennial polls.
Another twist in the tale could well be if the ruling Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar dispensation decide to field a extra seventh candidate in the fray for the polls. It then could force the Congress to increase its quota of votes for its candidate, upsetting the opposition MVA poll equations.
The party-wise strength in the 288 member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly is as follows – Shiv Sena 56, BJP 105, NCP 53, INC 45, BVA 3, Samajwadi Party 2, AIMIM 2, PJP 2, MNS 1, CPI-M 1, PWP 1, Swabhimani Paksha 1, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha 1, JSS 1, KSP 1 and Independents 13.
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