Maharashtra: In Another Major Setback For Ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress Alliance, BJP Wins Five Of 10 Legislative Council Seats

In yet another setback for the ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party has bagged five out of the 10 seats in the elections to the Maharashtra Legislative Council.

Out of the 10 seats that went to the polls on Monday (20 June), BJP won five seats, the NCP and Shiv Sena bagged two seats each while Congress won one seat.

The BJP had five candidates in fray for the Legislative Council elections - Praveen Darekar, Ram Shinde, Shrikant Bharatiya, Uma Khapre and Prasad Lad - all of whom won, reports Indian Express.

While the BJP had enough numbers in the Assembly to get four nominees elected to the Council easily, its fifth candidate Prasad Lad, too, made it to the Upper House of the state legislature after securing support from MLAs outside his party's pool of legislators.

The result of the state Legislative Council elections comes days days after the Rajya Sabha polls, which saw the BJP handing an embarrassing defeat to the Shiv Sena-led ruling coalition.

While the total strength in the Assembly is 288 members, 285 of them cast their votes.

The BJP has 106 MLAs in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, while remaining votes for its candidates have either come from independent MLAs, or those from small parties or from other parties.

The BJP required 24 additional votes to get its five candidates elected while the Congress needed eight additional votes to send both of its candidates to the Council.

'In the Rajya Sabha elections, we managed to win first preference votes of 123 MLAs but in this election, we managed to win 134 votes. This is an indication of unrest among MLAs against the state government,' BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis told reporters after the results were out.

Earlier on 11 June, BJP won three out of the six Rajya Sabha seats in the state that went to the polls. The BJP managed to win a third Rajya Sabha seat from Maharashtra despite lacking in numbers in the Assembly and in the process defeated its former ally Shiv Sena.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party had fielded two candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, but one of them, Sanjay Pawar lost.

(With inputs from PTI)

Also Read: Maharashtra: In A Major Setback To Ruling Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress Alliance, BJP Wins Three Of Six Rajya Sabha Seats