Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) on Sunday elected Jitendra Awhad as its group leader in the Maharashtra legislative assembly, while the youngest legislator in the 15th Maharashtra Assembly and first time MLA Rohit RR Patil was nominated as chief whip of the party. In the meeting, the party also decided to insist on paper ballots in elections.
The NCP(SP) chief chaired a meeting of newly elected MLAs at the party office in South Mumbai. However, the party did not elect a group leader of the legislature party due to non availability of the members of the upper house in the meeting.
After the meeting, Maharashtra NCP (SP) president Jayant Patil told the reporters that apart from Mr. Awhad and Rohit Patil, Uttam Janakar has also been elected as the whip. Out of 10 newly elected MLAs of the party, nine attended the meeting. Sandeep Kshirsagar did not come due to his felicitation in his Beed Assembly constituency, he said.
Rohit Patil is the son of former Maharashtra home minister late R.R. Patil. Hedefeated his father’s archrival Sanjay Kaka Patil from Tasgaon-Kavathe Mahankal assembly constituency in Sangli district. Sanjay Kaka Patil, who is also a former BJP Lok Sabha member, had switched to Ajit Pawar led NCP ahead of the Assembly election.
Awhad, who is very close to Sharad Pawar, has been consecutively elected from Mumbra-Kalwa Assembly constituency since 2009.
The NCP (SP) secured only 10 out of the 86 seats it contested in the Assembly election. After its massive defeat, the party has questioned the electoral process and EVMs and claimed that the election results were not the people's mandate.
In the meeting, MLAs again raised doubts over EVMS and decided to insist for elections through ballot papers in future.
Patil said that although the party has less numbers, the MLAs would continue to effectively raise the issues of common people in the state legislature. He also said that the MLAs also discussed serious issues of inexplicable increase in voting percentages in the last hour on polling day. “There is a complete mismatch with the final tally and form 17’s data. It is a very serious issue,” Patil said.
The Election Commission has denied the claims stating that authorised agents of all candidates were given a copy of Form 17, which has the total votes polled at the particular polling station and the number of polled votes shown in Form 17C cannot be changed and can be verified with the total votes counted.
