NDA wins 16 of 28 seats in Legislative Council graduate and teacher polls; Congress holds Nagpur

Biennial elections to Legislative Councils in several states were held recently. Voting was held for a total of 28 seats in graduates' and teachers' constituencies, five of them in Maharashtra. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 13 seats and its allies got three, taking the NDA's total to 16. Congress won just one seat, the Nagpur graduates' constituency in Maharashtra.

Among the allies, Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, the Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar and the Janata Dal (Secular) of Deve Gowda took one seat each. In the opposition INDIA bloc, the Samajwadi Party won five seats in Uttar Pradesh, Lalu Prasad's RJD won one in Bihar, and Sharad Pawar's NCP won two in Maharashtra. The BJP kept its numbers in Uttar Pradesh by winning six of 11 seats, but it lost in Varanasi and Lucknow. The BJP was also defeated in Patna.

In Nagpur, Congress's Abhijit Wanjari was the outgoing MLC and retained the seat. Before his win in 2020, the seat had been with the BJP in most elections. Wanjari had to struggle until the second-preference round. The BJP's Sudhakar Kohale led in the first round. Wanjari polled 67,231 votes across both rounds against Kohale's 63,960, so Kohale lost by about 3,000 votes. Wanjari was declared elected without reaching the quota.

Nitesh Karale of the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) was a strong third candidate. He did not get the party ticket because of the alliance, so he rebelled and polled about 26,000 votes. About 10,000 of his second-preference votes were counted, of which 8,000 went to Wanjari and 2,000 to the BJP.

Internal discord in the BJP hurt it in Nagpur and Pune. Former Nagpur MLC Anil Sole had sought the party's nomination. When he did not get it, he filed his papers as an independent. He withdrew after talks with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, but not within the deadline, so he appeared on the ballot paper as an independent candidate. It is suspected that about 15,000 of his supporters deliberately spoiled their ballot papers. The spoiled papers had no first-preference vote and went straight to a second preference. At least 10,000 of them carried the number two against Kohale's name. Had those votes gone to Kohale, he would have won in the first round.

In Karnataka, where Congress is in power, the BJP and the JD(U) won all four seats. These elections are held on ballot papers and electronic voting machines are not used. Congress had held four seats earlier, two in Maharashtra and two in Karnataka, and lost three of them. Contesting 12 seats, five in Bihar, four in Karnataka and three in Maharashtra, Congress won only one.

In Bihar, in the Patna teachers' constituency, which falls in the Lok Sabha constituency of BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Naval Yadav, a five-time MLC, lost and the RJD's Kumar won. Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj won the Darbhanga teachers' constituency. Rahul Raj, who was expelled from the BJP, won the Saran teachers' constituency as an independent.

In the Pune graduates' constituency, Arun Lad, an associate of Ajit Pawar, was the MLC. The BJP's Kaustubh Gawade contested there instead of the NCP's Ajit Pawar faction, and won. The Shinde Sena fielded a candidate in a friendly contest. In Amravati, Shinde took the sitting independent MLC into his party and gave him the ticket, and Kiran Sarnaik won, but without the BJP's support. In Aurangabad, Shinde Sena MLAs kept openly opposing Satish Chavan, the candidate of the NCP's Ajit Pawar faction, and Chavan lost.

Bitterness is also growing within the Mahayuti. BJP spokespersons and Shinde's spokespersons are fighting with each other, and there is discontent over Cabinet decisions as well. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is changing decisions taken by Shinde's ministers in the education and transport departments.