BJP tie-up to get 1 more seat in Council

Mumbai: The saffron alliance will get one more member elected to the Legislative Council. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced election to one Upper House seat, which was necessitated by the death of Shivajirao Deshmukh.

The saffron alliance has 180 MLAs, paving the way for the council election.

A senior cabinet minister said that chief minister Devendra Fadnavis will take a call on whether the candidate will be from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or an allied party.

Veteran Congress leader and former chairman of the Maharashtra Legislat-ive Council Shivajirao De-shmukh died on January 14. After his demise, the seat fell vacant.

According to the notification of ECI, the byelection of the Legislative  Council of Maharashtra will be conducted on June 7.

In this byelection, the members of the Lower House will elect the candidate. There are 288 MLAs in the state and the governor nominates one Anglo Indian to the Legislative Assembly.

Thus, there are 289 members in the Lower House.  An official of the state Legislature said that five members had resigned from the lower house and their resignation had been accepted. One member, Hanumant, Dolas had succumbed to his illness. Therefore, only 282 members we-re eligible to cast their vote.

The five members who resigned include Suresh Dhanorkar, Prataprao Chikhalikar, Harshv-ardhan Jadhav, Anil Gote and Ashish Deshmukh.