In the elections held for the 10 seats of the Legislative Council in Maharashtra, the NCP had the best performance after the BJP. Although the NCP has 53 MLAs in the Assembly, two of its MLAs – Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik – are in jail, who were not allowed to cast their votes. Thus its effective strength of MLAs is 51. Despite this, its two candidates got 56 votes in the Legislative Council elections. First candidate Eknath Khadse got 29 votes and second candidate Ramraje Nimbalkar got 27 votes. The question is from where did Pawar’s party juggle five extra votes? After the election, Eknath Khadse said that his old friends in BJP did cross-voting for him. Keep in mind that Khadse was in the BJP before. But his claim is not entirely true.
BJP leaders have not done cross voting. Had BJP leaders done cross-voting, the number of votes polled by its five candidates would not have reached 133. So, it seems that by talking to the smaller parties and independent MLAs supporting the government, the NCP garnered five extra votes for itself. It is also clear that Pawar left both the allies on their own terms or ensured that both of them suffer. Keep in mind that both the candidates of Shiv Sena also won but at least three of its MLAs did cross voting. Three Congress MLAs also did cross voting. On the contrary, all NCP MLAs voted for party candidates and on top of that, Pawar garnered five additional votes.
