Maharashtra MLC polls: MVA wins 3 of 5 seats as Mahayuti cracks show

Maharashtra's opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won three of the five Legislative Council seats that went to polls, while the ruling Mahayuti took two. The result, declared on Thursday, immediately exposed strains inside the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance.

The headline win came in Nagpur, where Congress's Abhijeet Wanjari retained the graduates' constituency by 3,271 votes over BJP's Sudhakar Kohale. Counting began Tuesday morning and ran for more than 40 hours. The seat carries symbolic weight: Nagpur is home to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari and the RSS headquarters, and Gadkari himself held it from 1990 to 2014.

Elsewhere, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) candidates took the Pune graduates' seat, with Harshada Deshmukh-Jadhav winning, and the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar graduates' seat. The Mahayuti's two wins were BJP's Kaustubh Gawade in the Pune teachers' constituency and Shiv Sena's Kiran Sarnaik in the Amravati teachers' constituency.

The blame game started fast. BJP spokesperson Navnath Ban said Shiv Sena did not honour alliance obligations in Pune and Nagpur, pointing to its late backing of independent Sachin Sanap in the Pune teachers' race. He also accused Sena MLA Abdul Sattar of campaigning against the NCP in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. BJP's Keshav Upadhye called for a review, noting a clean sweep might have been possible had partners not split their effort.

Sattar countered that the BJP should decide whether it wants to continue the alliance with Eknath Shinde's party. Deputy Chief Minister and NCP president Sunetra Pawar said her party would introspect. Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said graduates had rejected the BJP and its allies, though he added that alliance dharma slipped in both camps.

Congress made the most of the moment, circulating a screenshot of a since-deleted Fadnavis post that had dismissed the party's chances. State Congress chief Harshwardhan Sapkal called the outcome a sign of political change. For readers watching the bigger picture, graduates' and teachers' seats are small electorates, but they are a useful read on educated, urban sentiment and on whether coalition partners can coordinate before bigger contests.

Source reporting: Daily Pioneer.

Related: Meira Kumar to chair INDIA bloc's symbolic 'impeachment' of CEC Gyanesh Kumar on Oct 30 · Election Commission and RBI: Why Autonomy Is Not the Same as Technocracy