9 Oppn Maha MLAs voted for NDA pick
As many as nine legislators of the Opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) from Maharashtra have defied party orders and voted in favour of the NDA candidate, Ram Nath Kovind, an analysis of the results have shown.
The total tally of CongressNCP legislators is 83 and Meira Kumar, the Opposition alliance nominee could manage only 77 votes from the state. The NCP leadership, however, refuted the allegations that its MLAs resorted to cross-voting. The NCP also denied that the party was responsible for splitting Opposition votes.
On its part, state Congress leaders said that since there was no party whip on the voting, it is impossible to say who cross-voted.
The BJP has 122 members in the Assembly. Rahul Kul of the Rashtriya Samaj Party (RSP) led by Mahadev Jankar is also a supporter of the BJP. The Shiv Sena has 62 legislators and hence the saffron alliance has 138 members. But the NDA’s candidate got 208 votes. Two votes were invalid and one member — Kshitij Thakur of Bahujan Vikas Aghadi — was absent during the voting.
Ramesh Kadam, sacked member of the NCP who is in jail and was freed so that he could vote, said that he had voted in favour of Kovind. Jayant Patil, president of the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) and an MLC, said, “We three members have voted for Meira Kumar.” Patil claimed that it was the Congress that split Opposition votes.
Sunil Tatkare, state president of NCP, claimed that all 40 party MLAs went with Meira Kumar. He, too, said that all 9 who cross-voted were from the Congress. Ashok Chavan, Maharashtra Congress chief, said, “There was no whip from the party. Hence, there is always the possibility of a split in voting. We will soon find out who all went with Kovind.”