Fate of 11 MLC candidates to be decided today, Mahayuti bets on MVA’s Narvekar winning, Jayant Patil losing
The three candidates of MVA are Pradnya Satav of Congress, Jayant Patil of Peasants and Workers Party (supported by NCP-SP) and Milind Narvekar of Sena (UBT).
The election to the 11 vacant seats of Maharashtra State Legislative Council slated for Friday is likely to spring a surprise. While BJP-led Mahayuti is claiming that all its nine candidates are sure-shot winners, Maha Vikas Aghadi which does not have the required numbers to get all its three MLCs elected is banking heavily on cross-voting.
To get elected as an MLC, a candidate needs 23 votes. The BJP-led Mahayuti which has fielded nine candidates – BJP nine, NCP two and Shiv Sena two — has more than 200 MLAs including independents on its side. The MVA has 66 MLAs and is falling three short of the magic 69 figure to get all its three candidates elected.
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The three candidates of MVA are Pradnya Satav of Congress, Jayant Patil of Peasants and Workers Party (supported by NCP-SP) and Milind Narvekar of Sena (UBT).
Congress has 37 MLAs and is confident of Satav being elected once again as MLC. Congress has reserved 27 votes for Satav, four more than the required 23 to prevent the possibility of invalid votes, sources in the party said.
The remaining 10 votes of Congress will be distributed among two of the other MVA candidates. NCP (SP) has 11 MLAs and Sena (UBT) has 15 MLAs. Besides, three MLAs are supporting MVA which brings their total to 66, still three short of 69.
Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe said all three candidates of MVA will win. ”We won’t reveal our calculations and where the numbers are coming from, but all our candidates will win,” he said.
NCP spokesperson Umesh Patil claimed that all nine Mahayuti candidates will win, and was sure that one MVA candidate would lose. ”It is Jayant Patil of PWP who will most probably lose. It seems MVA is making all efforts to get Milind Narvekar elected as he is a close aide of Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray,” alleged Patil.
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Patil said Congress does not have the extra 10 votes. ”It has 8 votes. Two of their MLAs are always at our meetings,” he said, while refusing to reveal their names.
Sena (UBT) spokesperson Sanjay Raut said the party was confident of Narvekar’s victory. ”Not just Narvekar, all three of our candidates will win. Narvekar has been a long time secretary to Uddhav Thackeray and is on good terms with top BJP leaders.
Sena spokesperson Manisha Kayande said, ”We have with us 47 MLAs including 10 independents. So, we have no problem in getting our two candidates elected. As for the preference voting, it will be informed to the candidates on the day of voting.”
Amit Gorkhe, a BJP candidate, said, ”All five BJP candidates will win hands down as we have more than 100 MLAs of our own. Four candidates of our alliance partners will also win, as in total, including independents, we have the support of 200 plus MLAs.”
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Meanwhile to avoid cross-voting from their MLAs, the Mahayuti herded away its MLAs in Mumbai hotels. From MVA, only the Sena lodged its MLAs in a Mumbai hotel. Both MVA and Mahayuti held separate meetings with their MLAs who were briefed about the system of voting which includes preference votes.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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