Mumbai6 days ago
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The heads of all the three parties of MVA will address the meeting to be held today.
The ongoing meeting of Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders, who are in power in Maharashtra, has ended at Trident Hotel in Mumbai. CM Udvav Thackeray, NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, HK Patil and MVA MLAs were present in the meeting which lasted for about 50 minutes. Invitations were also sent to 29 independents and smaller parties for today’s meeting.
The matter was fine till the meeting for strategy, but the Samajwadi Party, an ally in the government, has boycotted it. At the same time, AIMIM, which is supporting the government from outside, has not yet clarified its position. A total of 11 independent MLAs had reached today’s meeting. These included Ashish Jaiswal, Kishore Jorgevar, Devendra Bhuyar, Geeta Jain, Manjula Gavit, Shyamsunder Shinde, Narendra Bhondekar, Sanjay Mama Shinde, Chandrakant Patil, Vinod Nikolay and Vinod Agarwal. That is, the support of these MLAs is being considered with Mahavikas Aghadi.
Handling independents is the biggest challenge
Independents supporting the government have also been finding faults in the work of the government at different forums. That is why it is believed that the eyes of the BJP are only on these independents. On Monday, Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis met some independent MLAs and spoke to some over the phone as well. However, the CM’s office also called them and asked to vote in their favor.
All the MLAs of Shiv Sena have been staying at a resort in Malad since late night.
All eyes are on tonight’s meeting
During the meeting to be held in Mumbai this evening, the leaders of the three big parties i.e. Shiv Sena, Congress-NCP are also to be addressed. Now it has to be seen that in this meeting which party leaders come in small parties and who do not? It is believed that after this the further strategy will be decided.
Shiv Sena imprisoned all the MLAs in the resort
Meanwhile, fearing horse-trading in the wake of Rajya Sabha polls, Shiv Sena has stayed at a resort in Malad to keep its MLAs together. There is a program to keep the MLAs present here for five days. The party is calling it a routine process, but political experts believe that the motive behind this is to stop ‘horse trading’.
Samajwadi Party is angry because
The votes of two SP MLAs are very important for the alliance. However, just before the elections, Samajwadi Party’s Mumbai President Abu Azmi has written a letter expressing displeasure with the MVA government. In the letter, Azmi has accused CM Uddhav Thackeray of ignoring the demands of the minority community. He wrote, ‘Despite two and a half years of MVA, no action has been taken on the problems of the minority community of the state. Is the MVA government secular, or is the face of Aghadi new Hindutva, which Uddhav Thackeray is talking about again and again these days.
Who are in the electoral fray?
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded three candidates, Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mahadik, while the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has fielded Praful Patel. Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar are the candidates from Shiv Sena. Congress has given ticket to Imran Pratapgarhi. That is, four candidates are from the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and three candidates are from the BJP. Now there will be a contest between Shiv Sena and BJP for the sixth seat of Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra.
29 MLAs can be a game changer
There are 287 MLAs (voters) in the 288-member Assembly. Shiv Sena, NCP-Congress Maha Vikas Aghadi has 152 members, while the BJP sitting on the opposition bench has 106 members. There is a tough fight between BJP and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra for the sixth seat. The key to victory here is in the hands of 29 MLAs. Of these, 13 are independents and 16 MLAs come from smaller parties. Both the parties are trying to bring them to their side by playing bets in different ways. If political experts are to be believed, many have also been shown the fear of the Central Investigation Agency.
In the meeting to be held today evening, CM Uddhav and NCP Chief Sharad Pawar are going to discuss the strategy ahead.
BJP needs 13 votes for 6th seat
According to the figures of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, about 42 votes are required for a candidate to win in the Rajya Sabha. If we look at the current equation, the BJP has 106 seats in the assembly. In such a situation, she can easily win 2 seats. Apart from this, the party has 22 extra votes left, due to which it has also been assured of support by 7 independents to win its third candidate. These include MLA from Vadner Ravi Rana. Despite adding these, the party still needs 13 more votes to win. In such a situation, BJP’s eyes are on the MLAs of smaller parties.
Shivsena needs 15 votes to win 6th seat
Shiv Sena has 55 MLAs from its party, 54 of NCP and 44 of Congress in the assembly. All the three coalition parties are easily winning one seat each. After this 13 votes of Shiv Sena, 12 of NCP and 2 votes of Congress are left. Thus the coalition has a total of 27 votes, but they still need 15 more votes to win. That’s why they are also keeping an eye on independents and smaller parties.