The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners are set to contest the legislative council elections together which are scheduled to be held on May 21. The Election Commission of India (ECI) earlier announced polls to the legislative council in Maharashtra on nine seats which have been vacant since April 24.
The alliance partners including Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have decided to contest the council polls on a total of six seats. Each alliance partner in the MVA government will field two candidates.
Shiv Sena has already finalised the candidature of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and has re-nominated Neelam Gorhe, the deputy chairman of Maharashtra Legislative Council. Congress and NCP are yet to declare their candidates.
Uddhav Thackeray will be the second person in his family to contest an election after his son, Aaditya Thackeray, who won the Vidhan Sabha elections from Worli in 2019.
The efforts were being made to make sure that the council polls are held unopposed. However, the possibility to have an unopposed election is bleak since the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to contest four seats.
If the MVA partners field two candidates each, there will be an election since the BJP is confident on winning four seats in the council polls and all 288-members of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly will have to come to Mumbai to vote.
The quota for a winning candidate in the legislative council is 29 votes. The MVA would need 174 votes to win on six seats while the BJP would need 116 votes to win on four seats.
The MVA, which has the support of 169 MLAs is in talks with the smaller and independent parties to fetch the sixth seat in the council. Apart from the MVA partners’ 154 legislators (Congress 44, Shiv Sena 56, NCP 54), it has the support of 15 others.
On the other hand, the opposition has the support of 115 MLAs including 105 legislators from the BJP and eight independents. The remaining four MLAs out of the 288 legislators don’t support either the opposition or the ruling alliance.
The Election Commission had earlier postponed the polls to the Rajya Sabha and other local bodies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it announced the polls to the legislative council on nine vacant seats in Maharashtra after an appeal was made by the MVA leaders and Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari.
Uddhav Thackeray took oath as the Maharashtra CM on November 28, 2019, and is not the member of either house of the state legislature. Any minister is constitutionally bound to become a member of the legislature within six months or else shall cease to be a minister. The deadline for Uddhav Thackeray is May 27.
More troubles can be caused if the lockdown is extended beyond May 17 in view of the coronavirus outbreak. The need to avoid a contest depends on the ruling parties in Maharashtra. According to EC, the last date to file the nomination is May 11 and the date for the withdrawal is May 14. The results will be announced on May 21 only.
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