The Shiv Sena on Wednesday nominated its leader Sanjay Raut as a candidate for the Rajya Sabha election slated for June 11. Raut has been a party MP for two consecutive terms and his current term ends on July 4, 2016.
Subhash Desai and Diwakar Raote, Sena ministers in the BJP-led state government, will be the party’s nominees for the Legislative Council elections scheduled on June 10, the party announced here. In Maharashtra, six RS seats are up for grabs while there are 10 vacancies in the Legislative Council.
Besides Raut, the other retiring Rajya Sabha MPs from Maharashtra are Ishwarlal Jain and Praful Patel (NCP), Vijay Darda and Avinash Pande (Congress), and Union minister Piyush Goyal (BJP).
The biennial elections to 57 seats in the Rajya Sabha are necessitated as 55 members from 15 states are retiring between June and August. As per the arithmetic, the BJP and Shiv Sena have a chance to wrest at least one seat each from Congress and NCP given their present strength in the Legislative Assembly.
The number of votes required by a candidate to win is pegged at 42. However, considering their strength in the Lower House, it seems unlikely that the Congress or NCP will field more than one candidate. The combined strength of Sena (63) and BJP (122) in the House is 185 while that of Congress and NCP are 42 and 41, respectively.
Rajya Sabha polls are held through open ballot wherein the members of the Legislative Assembly (excluding nominated MLA) have to display the preference of voting to the party whip.
The elections to 10 seats of Maharashtra Legislative Council will be held on June 10. —PTI
