MUMBAI: The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi partners assembled their MLAs at a hotel in Mumbai as a show of strength ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls where seven candidates are in the fray for six seats from the state. Eleven independent MLAs also attended the meeting.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and CM Uddhav Thackeray addressed the meeting and chalked out a joint strategy for the elections. This was the second time the MVA MLAs met since the coalition of Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP came up in 2019. The MLAs were told to fill a form with their details that will help the MVA to keep a count of the total numbers of MLAs in its support.
Smaller MVA allies such as the Samajwadi Party, Prahar Janshakti Party and Bahujan Vikas Party have threatened to vote against the Shiv Sena candidates. All these parties together have seven votes. “Both these parties said they would ally with secular parties (NCP and Congress) but not Shiv Sena. Therefore, it is a tricky situation. The NCP has enough numbers for its candidates, but Sena’s second candidate needs 16 more votes. If these parties decline their support, then the Sena candidate will be in trouble. But Pawar is working out a plan,” said a senior NCP leader.