Voting begins for six RS seats in Maharashtra
Mumbai: Voting for the six Rajya Sabha seats in Maharashtra began on Friday morning at the Vidhan Bhavan, the state legislature complex, here.
The polling process, which commenced at 9 am, will end at 4 pm and the results will be declared in the evening.
There are a total of seven candidates in the fray for six seats. While the BJP has fielded Union minister Piyush Goyal, former state minister Anil Bonde and former MP Dhananjay Mahadik, the Shiv Sena has given opportunity to MP Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar. From the NCP, Praful Patel is in the election ring, while the Congress has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi.
The contest will be primarily for the sixth seat between BJP's Mahadik and Sena's Pawar. This is after more than two decades that Maharashtra is witnessing a contest in the Rajya Sabha polls.
The 288-member Legislative Assembly is the electoral college for the biennial elections. But the total votes have come down to 285 since there is a vacancy due to the death of Shiv Sena MLA Ramesh Latke and a special court on Thursday rejecting the pleas filed by minister Nawab Malik and former minister Anil Deshmukh seeking a day's bail to vote in the elections.
After the special court's decision, Malik and Deshmukh, who are currently in jail in separate money laundering cases, on Thursday evening approached the Bombay High Court for relief. The high court is scheduled to hear their pleas in the morning.
For the last couple of days, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) (comprising Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) and the opposition BJP had kept their respective legislators in different hotels in Mumbai, where the party leaders explained to them to election process of the preferential system of voting.
On Friday morning, BJP legislators were the first to arrive at the Vidhan Bhavan in three buses for voting. Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Devendra Fadnavis, NCP leader and Home Minister Dilip Walse Patil, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Chhagan Bhujbal were among the first to arrive at the venue.
Bhujbal expressed confidence that all four candidates of the MVA will win.
The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) has decided to vote in favour of the Congress candidate. The announcement was made by AIMIM Lok Sabha member from Aurangabad Imtiaz Jaleel hours before the polling began.
"Our 2 AIMIM Maharashtra MLAs have been asked to vote for @INCIndia candidate @ShayarImran for Rajya Sabha seat. We extend our best wishes to him!" he said in a tweet.
Meanwhile, describing AIMIM as the "B team" of the ruling alliance, BJP legislator Atul Bhatkalkar said that is the reason why its two legislators were supporting the MVA candidates.
