The INDIA alliance, as we know, performed quite brilliantly in Maharashtra during the 2024 general elections. The alliance between INC, Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar led NCP managed to secure 30 out of the total 48 seats in Maharashtra. The NDA witnessed in front of their eyes a fall of about 24 seats and could only muster a win in 17 seats. At this point, MVA would obviously be highly optimistic regarding the MLC elections. This could have been the case until the results came out.
This is definitely not a picture we thought we would see after about a month post the general elections.
From a total of 11 biennial legislative council election seats, Mahayuti contested in 9. Turns out, they won all 9 of them. The Vidhan Parishad had some twists up its sleeves, especially considering the underwhelming performance of NDA in the general elections in Maharashtra. Now, before analysing this election, it is important to understand certain things about Legislative Councils.
BICAMERAL LEGISLATION
In India, only 6 out of 36 states and union territories have what we call a bicameral legislation. Those states are:
1. Andhra Pradesh
2. Bihar
3. Karnataka
4. Maharashtra
5. Telangana
6. Uttar Pradesh
In bicameral legislative setups, there are two separate chambers of legislation. The lower houses are called Legislative Assemblies (Vidhan Sabha) and the upper houses are called Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad), one third of whose members are elected every two years. The principle of bicameralism is to have another chamber of legislation in an effort to transparently hear the pleas of the people. Evidently, many states scrapped off this idea to adopt unicameralism.
MLC ELECTION ANALYSIS
Now that we understand the barebones of the system of Vidhan Parishad, let us analyse the victory of BJP and co., in its election. As already mentioned above, Mahayuti alliance whitewashed the MVA alliance, turning the tables once again. All 9 candidates of the Mahayuti Alliance acquired the 23 first preference votes. On the other side of the coin, while the Congress and Shiv Sena (UBT) managed to win one seat apiece, it was a total failure for Sharad Pawar backed candidate Jayant Patil. SS-UBT candidate Milind Narvekar, however, managed to win only in the second round, gathering a total of 22 first preference votes.
The case becomes interesting when looking at the Congress. Yes, Pragya Satav, the INC candidate did get 25 first preference votes. But something does not add up and let me point that out to you:-
Congress has 37 MLAs. Notably, out of these 37 MLAs, 25 gave their first preference votes to Pragya Satav, which resulted in his victory in 1 seat. This means about 12 votes were additional. Let us now take Milind Narvekar who won 22 first preference votes. However, the SS-UBT has only 15 MLAs. If we take Jayant Patil's fate, all of the 12 votes he acquired, albeit on a loosing cause, were from the NCP. So, even if we presume 7 out of the 12 additional votes from Congress went for Milind, there comes something that irks our mind - Where did those 5 votes go?
There must have been some sort of cross voting if this is the result we are seeing. This is something the INDIA alliance will look at with contemplative eyes. The assembly elections are just about 3 months away as well, and as mentioned in the opening lines of this blog, this is where the MVA's optimistic feelings get jeopardised. This "hiccup", along with the rest of the results, does give a feeling of the political landscape. Ajit Pawar and Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's factions of the NDA are still strong. Even after the disappointing general elections, these people do have a say and are still very much in the game for the assembly elections. This result obviously does not give a consensus about the opinion of the public. So, the NDA-Mahayuti should not get carried away by their success in this Vidhan Parishad election.
The detailed statistics of the candidates are as follows:
BJP
Pankaja Munde - 26 (Winner)
Parinay Fuke - 26 (Winner)
Amit Gorkhe - 26 (Winner)
Yogesh Tilekar - 26 (Winner)
Sadabhau Khot - 14 (Winner in second round)
Ajit Pawar's NCP
Shivaji Rao Garje - 24 (Winner)
Rajesh Witekar - 23 (Winner)
Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena
Kripal Tumane - 24 (Winner)
Bhavna Gawli - 24 (Winner)
Congress
Pragya Satav - 25 (Won)
Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena
Milind Narvekar - 22 (Winner in second round)
Sharad Pawar's NCP
Jayant Patil - 12 (Lost)
An interesting demographic from this is the fact that out of the 5 candidates of BJP, two of them are from OBC category, one belongs to the Dalit community, and Pankaja Munde, who lost the Lok Sabha elections in Beed, sits as a winner in the legislative council.
CONCLUSION
There are many key takeaways already mentioned in my analysis of this elections, NCP candidate losing despite the backing of Shinde; Narvekar winning despite fielding SS-UBT in place of Uddhav himself; Eknath, Ajit and BJP holding firm ground; and the cross voting of Congress MLAs. The past few months literally proves the phrase that democracy is a "dance". Things are bound to get more spicier once the Assembly elections take place in Maharashtra. It is surely going to be one interesting affair. The NDA can enjoy their victory with sweets, but surely they must pull their socks back up to achieve such success in public polls.
Sources:
NDTV
Business Today
ABP News
India Today
The Hindu
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