Parties check how their MLAs voted
A day after its victory in the legislative council polls, all parties are looking at permutations and combinations to establish how their legislators voted.
A day after its victory in the legislative council polls, all parties are looking at permutations and combinations to establish how their legislators voted.
The results indicate most parties, except the Nationalist Congress Party, suffered due to cross voting.
While the Congress lost two to three votes, the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party also lost three votes each.
The Congress, however, said none of its votes had been diverted to other candidates and insisted that the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had no role to play in electing Congress legislators.
“There is no question of asking MNS for votes. We had the requisite numbers to get our three official candidates elected in the first round,” Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee president Manikrao Thakre said at a press conference on Friday.
The Sena has alleged that there was large-scale horse-trading in the elections. The party’s mouthpiece, Saamna, also criticised MNS for cross voting.
“Democracy was up for sale in this election,” Sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut said. Party legislator Subhash Desai said the Sena did not conduct any meeting on Friday to assess damage.
A victorious Thakre, meanwhile, said that the Congress strategy was to transfer surplus votes to independent Vijay Sawant.
“He also had the support of independents and other smaller parties,” Thakre said. “You should ask him whether MNS voted for him or not.”
Thakre said the party had fixed a quota of 28 and not 30 first preference votes for the three candidates. “Sanjay Dutt and Dipti Chaudhary (two of the nominees) got two votes extra,” Thakre said adding the Congress did not indulge in cross voting.
Thakre said the party had not planned to get Sawant elected in the first round. “As per our strategy, the second and third preference votes of our candidates were to be transferred to Sawant and voting took place accordingly,” he said.