How the BJP edged out the MVA for the sixth seat in Maharashtra

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Dhananjay Mahadik won the sixth Rajya Sabha seat in Maharashtra after a second round of counting of votes that commenced in the early hours of June 11. Shiv Sena legislator Sanjay Pawar, another contestant for the seat, lost.

There were seven candidates in the fray for six Rajya Sabha seats with the BJP fielding union minister Piyush Goyal, former minister Anil Bonde and Mahadik, a former MP. The ruling Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition fielded parliamentarian Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar (both from Shiv Sena), former Union minister Praful Patel (NCP) and Imran Pratapgarhi (Congress).

Five winning candidates were declared in the first round of counting: Praful Patel, Sanjay Raut, Imran Pratapgarhi, Bonde and Goyal.

Goyal and Bonde of the BJP received 48 votes each while Pratapgarhi of the Congress won 44 votes. Praful Patel of the NCP won 43 votes and Sanjay Raut won 41 votes.

“We had 169 votes in our kitty, but only 161 came our way, which cost us the election. Out of the 17 legislators that voted for the BJP, nine were on their side as per our calculations. Eight legislators who were on our side, went with them,” Rajya Sabha parliamentarian from Shiv Sena Anil Desai, said declining to name the eight legislators who voted for BJP.

“We did not get the three votes from Hitendra Thakur’s Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA), Sanjay Shinde (MLA, Karmala), Shyam Sunder Shinde (MLA, Loha) and Devendra Bhuyar (MLA, Morshi),” Sena spokesperson and one of Friday’s RS winners Sanjay Raut said. Bhuyar and Sanjay Shinde said that they voted for the MVA candidates.

The counting of votes was held up on Friday after the BJP and the MVA traded allegations about the conduct of certain MLAs of each camp soon after all 285 legislators cast their votes to indicate their preferred candidate early Friday evening.

The ECI took note of the objections raised by a delegation of BJP leaders and a letter signed by politicians from all three of MVA’s constituents, the Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP.

The voting conduct of five legislators — Jitendra Awhad (Nationalist Congress Party), Yashomati Thakur (Indian National Congress), Suhas Kande (Shiv Sena), and BJP’s Sudhir Mungantiwar and independent MLA Ravi Rana — was called into question.

The counting of votes was held up for several hours and did not commence till well after midnight. Eventually, the vote cast by Shiv Sena’s Suhas Kande was disqualified by the ECI, which reviewed video footage of all five MLAs casting their vote.

The MVA has 150 members (excluding two Nationalist Congress Party legislators Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, who are in jail on separate money-laundering charges). It needed at least 14 more votes to win its fourth seat. The BJP has 106 MLAs of its own, and needed 17 more votes to win its third seat.

Based on the strength in the assembly, the BJP could easily win two seats, while the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress could win one each. The contest was on for the sixth seat. For it, the votes of 29 MLAs —16 from small parties and 13 independents — were crucial.

After the second round of counting (which takes into account the second preference votes), Dhananjay Mahadik of BJP received 41 votes while the second preference votes of Sanjay Pawar were not counted as Mahadik had reached the quota to win the sixth seat.

How did the numbers come about?

Mahadik received 27 votes in the first round. The 14 surplus votes of two BJP candidates who won (Goyal and Bonde; he was the second choice) were added to Mahadik’s tally, bumping his numbers to 41 which was the required bar to win.

Pawar got 33 votes in the first round.

“The surplus votes of Goyal and Bonde, who secured 48 votes each, were transferred to Mahadik, which took his tally to 41 votes,” Desai, who was present during the counting, said.

Anant Kalse, former principal secretary of the state legislature said that the BJP got their legislators to give maximum first preference votes to two candidates (Goyal and Bonde), which helped in the counting for second preference votes. “In the counting, the second preference votes are first considered of the candidate who has the most surplus votes.”

“The series of our victory has begun and it will continue,” said leader of opposition Devendra Fadnavis soon after the results were declared. “I dedicate our victory to two MLAs, Laxman Jagtap and Mukta Tilak who were unwell and bed-ridden but still travelled in an ambulance to vote for us,” he said.

Jagtap and Tilak are BJP legislators from Pune. Both came to give their vote in an ambulance, as both are unwell. Tilak is admitted to a Bombay hospital while Jagtap arrived by road from Pune.