Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 11: Except in Rajasthan, the BJP managed to edge past its opponents in other states in the elections to the Rajya Sabha demonstrating its capacity at meticulous planning and exposing the weaknesses in the opposition camps, particularly the Congress members, to get lured away.
While the BJP’s bet Subhash Chandra failed in Rajasthan, it registered unexpected win in Haryana luring away two Congress votes, floored its former ally Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and managed to win away rivals votes from the Janata Dal (Secular) and Congress camps in Karnataka to win three of the four seats with Congress getting the remaining seat.
The three-cornered contest for two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana Friday turned out to be a thriller. While the ruling BJP’s official nominee Krishan Panwar romped home, the principal Opposition Congress’s official candidate Ajay Maken failed to sail through despite the party having two excess votes than required. Maken lost the poll by a fraction of a single vote, only 0.66 of one vote, because of the Congress MLA did not vote for the official nominee and another apparently deliberately cast a wrong vote to be cancelled. Both the MLAs are believed to be detractors of the Congress Haryana satrap Bhoopinder Singh Hooda. The Independent candidate backed by the BJP and its ally JJP, Kartikeya Sharma, media baron, edged out Maken by virtue of the surplus votes of the BJP official candidate Panwar transferred to Sharma.
In Maharashtra, it was victory of the BJP’s methodical calculations in edging past the three-party ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) led by its erstwhile ally Shiv Sena. The MVA suffered a set-back as BJP managed to clinch the sixth seat by mustering the required number of votes from the smaller parties and independents many of whom are supporting the MVA government. “Rajya Sabha was just a trailer. Wait and watch what we do next,” former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis said after the party’s victory.
The ruling coalition of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress failed to draw up an effective strategy to outmanoeuvre the BJP’s third candidate, Dhananjay Mahadik, from winning. According to BJP insiders, it was Fadnavis’ decision to field a third candidate and the strategy paid off.
With this victory, the BJP has managed to trump its old ally Sena, which switched sides to join hands with the Congress and the NCP after the 2019 Assembly polls. Though the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 105 seats, it was forced to sit in the Opposition as the MVA alliance emerged. The victory, according to political observers, sends out a message that the smaller parties that seemed to be on the ruling coalition’s side are no longer happy with it.
While the Sena not only failed to get its second candidate, Sanjay Pawar, elected, its winning candidate Sanjay Raut also polled the lowest votes (41) among all the winning candidates. Sena MLA Suhas Kande’s vote being declared invalid and NCP MLAs Anil Deshmukh and Nawab Malik, both under arrest, not being allowed to vote do not explain the Sena’s poor showing.
Driving home the point, Fadnavis told reporters, “It is a convincing victory for the BJP and it is not just adding up of numbers. Had even Nawab Malik been allowed to cast his vote in the election and even if Sena had not lost one of its votes, the BJP would have still won the third seat.”
With 41 votes required for the candidates to win, the alliance required 164 votes to get its four nominees — Praful Patel of the NCP, Imran Pratapgarhi of the Congress, and Raut and Pawar from Sena — elected.
The alliance had 152 votes (the Congress 44, the NCP 53, and the Sena 55) and had to get 12 additional votes from smaller parties to send Pawar to the Upper House of Parliament. These smaller parties and Independents make up 29 votes in the 288-member Assembly. Though the Sena-led alliance claimed in the run-up to the polls that it had the support of 16 such votes in its pocket, Pawar’s defeat shows it had overestimated its support among the smaller parties and Independents.
After Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Pawar lost the Rajya Sabha polls from Maharashtra to BJP’s Dhananjay Mahadik, party leader Sanjay Raut on Saturday alleged that the BJP put pressure on the Election Commission to get his party’s one vote disqualified. Talking to reporters, Raut, who himself managed to win a seat, said the BJP’s victory was not as huge as it was being made out to be, and added that the Sena’s second candidate secured more first preference votes.
“I don’t think the BJP’s candidate has won. The first preference votes of 33 were secured by Pawar,” Raut said, adding that BJP’s Mahadik bagged 27 votes as first preference. “He won on the basis of the second preference vote,” Raut said.
Complimenting Fadnavis, NCP Chief Sharad Pawar said it was because the saffron party had managed to win over some of the Independent candidates that were supporting the ruling alliance. “This has happened largely due to Devendra Fadnavis’s ability to win over people with all the measures at his disposal,” Pawar said.
The bitter contest that went to the wire saw three candidates of the BJP – Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Mahadik – winning the polls. The Sena (Raut), NCP (Praful Patel) and Congress (Imran Pratapgarhi) won one seat each.
After this, the focus will now shift to the June 20 MLC elections in which 10 seats are at stake. The three MVA parties have fielded two candidates each. The BJP has five candidates in the race and is backing an Independent. Unlike the Rajya Sabha polls, the state council elections are held through secret voting.
“We have to exercise caution, the BJP will indulge in rampant horse-trading to get its candidates elected in council,” alleged a senior minister belonging to the Shiv Sena. “Unlike the BJP, we have to ensure our allies Congress and NCP help us in drawing up fool-proof plans.”
Although the BJP faced an embarrassment in Rajasthan with one of its MLAs switching sides, its gamble in Karnataka paid off as its third candidate won because of cross-voting by a JD(S) MLA and an independent legislator.