BJP’s cross-voting mystery

Senior BJP leader and union minister Venkaiah Naidu has said that the state Assembly membership of legislators, who went against the party whip and cross-voted in recent elections to the Rajya Sabha, should be cancelled. After winning his Rajya Sabha seat from Rajasthan, Mr Naidu brought up the subject while collecting his election certificate from the returning officer. “Their membership of the state assembly should be cancelled,” he said, referring to those who cross-voted.

Immediately after the results were announced and it was clear that the BJP had got less number of votes than anticipated, parliamentary affairs minister, Rajendra Singh Rathore had admitted that cross-voting took place.

The party won all four RS seats that went to polls in the state last Saturday but after claiming that it had the support of 166 legislators it received the support of only 164; that too after an Independent MLA switched sides at the eleventh hour and voted for the BJP.

A week later the state leadership has been denying cross voting by any party MLA. “Independent MLA Nand Kishore Mah-aria (Fatehpur) and Zami-ndara Party MLA Sona-devi (Raisingh-nagar) did not vote for us. That’s why our total votes fell two sh-ort of what we had counted on before the polls,” BJP state president, Ashok Parnami said.

Mr Maharia has denied the allegation claiming that he voted for the BJP candidate. Still, going by Mr Parnami’s claim that Mr Maharia voted for Kamal Morarka, there was at least one more, either a BJP MLA or an Independent, who did not vote as “trained”.

Counting Congress’s 24 MLAs, National People’s Party’s four, BSP’s two and three Independents, Mr Morarka should have got 33 votes. Since one Independent switched sides, his tally should have fallen to 32 votes. But, Mr Morarka received 34 votes.

The question before the BJP’s state leadership was how to skip blame and avoid embarrassment because despite elaborate arrangements to keep its flock together and using every trick it knew to get the votes of non-BJP MLAs, cross voting took place.

After all none other than Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje was personally supervising the election management even inviting a dig by PCC chief Sachin Pilot who said, \"For the first time, a chief minister (Vasundhara Raje) had to become election agent and sit for 8-hours to crosscheck every BJP MLA's vote. It shows the party's distrust in own MLAs.\"