Polls for 9 council seats on May 21: ECI looks at modalities

Poll body looks at ways, amid lockdown and pandemic; ruling parties may prefer unopposed election

Even as the Election Commission (EC) is tapping all options to conduct the May 21 polls to the nine seats of the legislative Council, which could facilitate the election of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray to the legislature, the ruling parties are in favour of electing the members unopposed, to avoid the cumbersome activities of polls amid lockdown restrictions and other precautions that would be needed.

HT Image

After the ECI on Friday announced the schedule for the elections, the state poll body started deliberations on the steps to be taken. The seats had fallen vacant on April 24 after the ECI postponed the elections in the wake of the Covid-19 lockdown.

“We have at least two weeks to decide the modalities to hold the elections, following the norms of the lockdown by avoiding crowding. The ECI has directed the government to appoint special officers for compliance of the lockdown norms, besides which we could even think of holding the polls at the divisional or collector offices, instead of making 288 MLAs travel to Vidhan Bhavan. The discussion will be held in due course with the ECI,” said an official.

Baldev Singh, chief electoral officer, Maharashtra, said the decision over the modalities will be taken soon.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, with support from its smaller allies and independents, has 114 MLAs and can get four seats elected to the council against the three seats they held among the vacant seats.

Three ruling parties –Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress- forming Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has the combined strength of 169, including the support of their smaller allies and independents. The three ruling parties can go for five seats, one seat less than they held in the nine seats vacated last week.

According to a leader from the Congress, the elections are likely to be held unopposed in the given situation and with the numbers with each of the parties.

“It has been the tradition that whenever there is a big leader in the fray, the elections are held unopposed. Besides, the opposition has the exact number (114 MLAs) to get four seats elected, while the three ruling parties are short of at least five votes, if they decide to fight unitedly. Instead of indulging in a tug-of-war for additional numbers and inviting the threat of cross-voting, the ruling parties are likely to contest five candidates and avoid the elections,” he said. The required quota of votes per seat in the council election is 28.81 votes.

“The NCP and Congress had two sitting MLCs each, while the Sena one in the nine seats. On the basis of their individual strength, the Sena can demand two seats as they have 58 MLAs required to elect two MLCs. Secondly, the Sena would want their leader and deputy chairman in the legislative council Neelam Gorhe to be reelected to the upper house, apart from Thackeray. In such a scenario, the Congress will have to compromise on one seat,” said a NCP leader.

BJP’s Smita Wagh, Arun Adsad and Prithviraj Deshmukh retired on April 24, while NCP’s Hemant Takle, Anand Thakur and Kiran Pawaskar were among the nine MLCs to retire. The Congress’s Haribhau Rathod and Chandrakant Raghuvanshi (who joined the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls after resigning from the party) too had retired. Gorhe was the only Sena MLC to retire on April 24.

The BJP is not expected to repeat its retired MLCs and may field Chandrakant Raghuvanshi along with some of its senior leaders who lost in the Assembly polls.

The NCP is expected to repeat Hemant Takle, while the Congress may go for fresh faces.