BJP set to gain ground after Council election

Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party is set to improve its tally in the Upper House of Maharashtra post July 16 election of 11 Legislative Council seats. Subsequently, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will lose its number one position in the House.

 The 11 seats will be elected through Assembly members. Out of the 11 MLCs whose term is about to end in July last week, NCP has four, Congress three, BJP two, Shiv Sena and Peasant and Workers’ Party (PWP) one each.

The BJP has highest number of MLAs (123) in Assembly due to which it is set to get the biggest pie of the new batch. It could send total five persons to Council. Out of those five, one seat will go to its ally Mahadev Jankar, cabinet minister, as his term will end in July.

As of now, Opposition parties consist of NCP, Congress, PWP, People’s Republican Party (PRP), Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and six independent, who have 47 members out of 78 in the House. But after the election, the tally could go down to 40 and BJP-Sena will rise from 29 to 38. Loosing strong majority in Upper House will be a setback for the Opposition parties.

NCP with its 20 members is the single largest party in Council. Its four members are set to retire in July. Following which the party would be able to send only one person to the House as it has fewer seats. NCP’s tally will come down from 20 to 17. Meanwhile, BJP has 18 members in Council. Two of them are going to retire and party could send five people. So the tally will go from 18 to 21 that will make BJP the single largest party in Legislative Coun-cil four years after coming to power in the state.