Setback For MVA As BJP Wins An Extra Seat In Legislative Council Elections

The BJP has bagged five out of the 10 seats in the elections to the Maharashtra Legislative Council.

Why this grabs attention: BJP had enough numbers in the Assembly to get four nominees elected to the Council easily but its fifth candidate too made it to the Upper House.

• The BJP had five candidates - Praveen Darekar, Ram Shinde, Shrikant Bharatiya, Uma Khapre and Prasad Lad - all of whom won.

• This means that the BJP candidates secured support from MLAs outside the party's pool of legislators.

Setback for MVA: The NCP and Shiv Sena bagged two seats each while Congress won one seat with its one candidate losing.

• A similar thing happened in the Rajya Sabha polls, where the BJP handed an embarrassing defeat to the Shiv Sena-led ruling coalition.

• The BJP managed to win a third Rajya Sabha seat from Maharashtra despite lacking in numbers in the Assembly.

The numbers: While the total strength in the Assembly is 288 members, 285 of them cast their votes.

• The BJP has 106 MLAs, while the remaining votes for its candidates have either come from independent MLAs, or those from other parties.

• The BJP required 24 additional votes to get its five candidates elected while the Congress needed eight additional votes to send both of its candidates to the Council.

• In the Rajya Sabha elections, BJP managed to win first preference votes of 123 MLAs but in this election, it managed to win 134 votes.