Elections will be held for 56 Rajya Sabha seats, including six seats in Maharashtra. The members of the legislative assembly will choose the candidates running for the Rajya Sabha. Union ministers Narayan Rane, V Murlidharan, Prakash Javdekar (all BJP), Anil Desai (Shiv Sena), Kumar Ketkar (Congress), and Vandana Chavan (NCP) are the Maharashtra members whose mandates are coming to an end. With the existing strength of the parties in the assembly, the Congress and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena can each elect one member, while the BJP can easily submit three nominations.
Ajit Pawar, the deputy chief minister, has the support of more than 40 lawmakers and can elect one candidate. Nevertheless, it is unclear whose whip the lawmakers would be required to follow, as neither the Assembly Speaker nor the Election Commission of India (ECI) have issued a statement regarding the NCP split. Colleagues of Ajit Pawar are optimistic that the ECI decision will be made before the election, which would simplify matters.
Rumour has it that Raghuram Rajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, may be put forward by the Congress to run for the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA). But if the Shinde-led Shiv Sena imposes a whip ordering its members to vote for its candidate, Shiv Sena (UBT) MLAs might not be allowed to cast a ballot. The legislators from the two NCP factions are in the same situation.
The BJP camp claims that deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is eager to run a fourth candidate in an attempt to steal votes from the Congress and defeat their nominee. It seems that Fadnavis has discussed this with Delhi’s senior brass. In the MVA camp, there are concerns about cross-voting if this occurs. When it was evident that something was wrong in the MVA camp, it was during the June 2022 Rajya Sabha elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) defeated the Shiv Sena (Sena) nominee, Dhananjay Mahadik, in a close race for the sixth seat. The ECI overturned a Shiv Sena member’s vote in response to BJP concerns. A week later, Shiv Sena MLAs engaged in widespread cross-voting in the legislation council elections, and that same day, Shinde departed for Surat accompanied by other MLAs.
Will the MVA be able to keep its flock together, or will the opposition see it for what it is?
The Ambedkar puzzle
MVA leaders were a little relieved that Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chairman Prakash Ambedkar attended the meeting on Friday after they had scheduled a meeting in a hotel in south Mumbai to discuss seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha elections. In the short time remaining until the election is announced, the three MVA parties are eager to settle on seat distribution in order to start their campaigns. Their happiness, though, was fleeting. Ambedkar advised them that seat-sharing should not be implemented until a common minimum programme (CMP) had been developed. Ambedkar’s declaration that the alliance with India was ended also made his new allies furious. The MVA leaders have realised that working with Ambedkar will be challenging. They’re even getting ready for it, actually. After receiving his request, they immediately established a commission under the direction of the former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to draft a CMP. Ambedkar had claimed even after the January 30 MVA meeting that he had been forced to wait outside while the three parties were having inside conversations. To demonstrate that VBA representatives attended the meeting and even had lunch with them, MVA leaders immediately shared photos from it on social media.
A prickly problem
Minister for the NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) and well-known leader of the Other Backward Classes (OBC), Chhagan Bhujbal, has been vocal in his criticism of the government’s actions in response to Maratha activist Manoj Jarange-Patil, who wants to grant OBC quota benefits to Marathas who can demonstrate their Kunbi ancestry. He’s even stirring some controversy with his zeal. Speaking at an OBC rally on Saturday, Bhujbal referenced a case in which Maratha community members allegedly boycotted a barbershop because the business owner had made a social media comment in favour of the OBC reservation. Next, Bhujbal pleaded with the barbers not to serve Marathas with their services. He said, “Let them shave each other’s beards,” to much laughter. However, such language from both sides has sparked worries that the state’s atmosphere, particularly in rural Maharashtra, will get worse over the next several days.
