Maharashtra sees voting for Rajya Sabha seats after quarter of century

For the first time in 24 years, Maharashtra would witness voting for Rajya Sabha elections in what is being seen as an eyeball-to-eyeball political confrontation between the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

The last time the state had to vote for elections to the Upper House of Parliament was in 1998. Since then, all Rajya Sabha candidates were elected unopposed.

This time, there are seven candidates in the race for the six vacancies.

A lot has changed in the intermediate years. Unlike earlier, where the election was held by secret ballot system, this time the voters needed to show their vote to the party whip before dropping it into the ballot box.

The BJP has put up an additional candidate to reveal the cracks within the MVA and test the strength of the Uddhav Thackeray-led, and Sharad Pawar-crafted, dispensation which kept the saffron party out of power in Maharashtra.

As there are several new legislators, the MVA partners—Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Indian National Congress—and the BJP have held separate training sessions and mock exercises to ensure there would be no mistakes in an election where every vote counts.

Maharashtra contributes 288—the number of seats in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly—to the Rajya Sabha electoral college. However, this time the state will only be able to put up 287, as one of the MLAs, a member of Shiv Sena, Ramesh Latke died on May 12.

And the possibility of NCP members Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik being able to vote would only be decided by the Bombay High Court on Friday, bringing the voting value further down.

However, there has been intense deliberations across parties in the run up to the election on Friday. On Thursday, Maharashtra Chief Minister, and Shiv Sena chief, Uddhav Thackeray spoke to NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, the chief architect of the MVA. Separately, a delegation of senior Congressmen, including the party’s in-charge for the polls Mallikarjun Kharge, called on Pawar.

BJP’s in-charge for Rajya Sabha polls in the state Ashwini Vaishnaw is camping in Mumbai; he is said to be holding a series of meetings with MLAs, Leader of the Opposition Devendra Fadnavis and BJP state president Chandrakant Patil.

MLAs and leaders of all the four parties have been put up in different hotels to build pressure and create confusion, while some key trouble-shooters visited rival camps.

The BJP candidates in the Rajya Sabha fray are Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mahadik.

The MVA candidates are Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar (from Shiv Sena), Praful Patel (from NCP) and Imran Pratapgarhi (from Congress).

Come Friday morning, the fruits of the machinations of these parties would be revealed as the results to Rajya Sabha elections are announced an hour after the voting.