Mumbai: The Rajya Sabha (RS) elections for six seats will be held next month. With its increased strength in the state assembly, the BJP can now get three MPs elected with the help of the Shiv Sena. The Congress and NCP with its dwindling number of MLAs will lose one seat each, said sources from the party and Election Commission.
BJP sources said that union minister Prakash Javdekar is likely to get one seat from the state. However, other BJP leaders have already started lobbying for the other two Rajya Sabha seats.
The tenure of NCP MP Vandana Chavan and D.P. Tripathi, Congress MP Rajeev Shukla and Rajani Patil, Shiv Sena MP Anil Desai and BJP MP Ajay Sancheti will get over on April 2, 2018. So the EC will declare the elections next month.
As per strength of the political parties in the legislative assembly, one seat of Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP each can get elected and three BJP candidates can win if Shiv Sena gives extra votes to the third BJP candidate.
The RS elections have open ballot system, so votes will be cast as per orders from the party command. There is no scope of cross-voting. “The BJP will have to woo Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray for additional votes,” source said.
Sources from the EC said that each vote will have a value of 100 and value of all votes will be 28,800.
Every candidate will need 42.14 votes to win. As per party-wise strength in the assembly, the BJP has 122 members, Shiv Sena (62), Congress (42), NCP (41), Peasants and Workers Party of India (3) and other members are from small parties and independents.
