Rajya Sabha polls: Fadnavis stamp on BJP’s big win in Maharashtra

The fiercely fought elections for six seats saw seven candidates in the fray. The BJP fielded three candidates — Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mhadik. The Congress (Imran Pratapgadi) and the NCP (Praful Patel) fielded one candidate each. The Shiv Sena, which had 54 votes in the Assembly, needed 41 votes for each of its two candidates, Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar. The fight, thus, had boiled down to the sixth seat from Maharashtra — between BJP’s Mhadik and Sena’s Sanjay Pawar.

The BJP, which has only 106 seats in the Assembly, polled 123 votes, enough for all three of its candidates to get through. While seven of these additional 17 votes were from Independents who were expected to join hands with the BJP, the remaining 10 were of members representing smaller parties and Independents who were allies of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition government. It’s here that Fadnavis worked his magic.

While murmurs began soon after within the MVA about how the Sena had failed to strategise effectively, many also pointed to the BJP’s meticulous planning, led by Fadnavis, by way of comparison.

“The Sena had taken the responsibility of managing smaller parties and Independents. Why did it fail to keep them with the MVA?” said an NCP leader.

Sources in the BJP say the party’s win in the Rajya Sabha polls has reaffirmed Fadnavis’s role in the BJP organisation and established him as a man for the occasion.

In 2019, when the BJP, despite emerging as the single largest party, had been kept out of power by the Sena which joined hands with the NCP and Congress to form the MVA government, the knives had come out for Fadnavis. Sources say those voices have been silenced with this win that has won Fadnavis praise from even the Opposition NCP and the Congress.

Soon after the results, NCP president Sharad Pawar said, “Fadnavis performed a miracle by getting the smaller parties and Independents to support his party. He has succeeded in bringing them closer to his party using various means.”

Pawar’s remarks, as expected, caused a flutter in the MVA and set off speculation about the NCP was leaning towards the BJP and if his praise for Fadnavis was a veiled message to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray.

Senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal said, “Pawar saab’s remark was for ruling parties to learn from their mistakes. It is a fact that Fadnavis outsmarted the MVA. His planning on preferential votes was something we completely overlooked.”

Fadnavis, meanwhile, has declared that he is planning ahead. “We are not working to pull down the government. We have already set our goal on the 2024 Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. We are working towards an absolute majority in the next elections, both at the Centre and the state.”