BJP to withdraw Vijaya Rahatkar’s name from Rajya Sabha election

Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will withdraw its fourth candidate for the Rajya Sabha (RS) elections scheduled on March 23 for seats from Maharashtra. The party had filed nomination of Vijaya Rahatkar, the national president from its women’s wing, as its fourth candidate. The buzz in the political circles is that after the Shiv Sena refused to give its extra votes to the BJP, the latter decided against taking any risk. 

The BJP has fielded four candidates while as Congress, nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena has fielded one each. The BJP had asked Ms Rahatkar to be its fourth candidate on Monday. Although the BJP did not have enough votes for its fourth candidate to sail through the elections, there was buzz that the BJP was banking on the Sena’s extra 20 votes. 

On Tuesday the forms of the candidates were scrutinised and accepted by the election returning officer. However, the BJP later decided to drop Ms Rahatkar from the election race. “The Sena leadership was not ready to give us its additional votes. They felt that the votes for any BJP candidate would send a wrong signal to its cadre as Narayan Rane too is contesting on a BJP ticket,” said senior BJP MLA on the issue. 

On Wednesday, the day for withdrawal of nomination, the BJP will officially withdraw Rahatkar from the fray.