RS polls: Athawale, Tawde, Parth among 6 from Mahayuti, and Sharad Pawar from MVA file nominations

Mumbai, Mar 5 (PTI) Six Mahayuti candidates, including Union minister Ramdas Athawale and BJP leader Vinod Tawde, along with opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi nominee Sharad Pawar on Thursday filed their nominations for the seven Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra falling vacant next month.

Apart from the four candidates of the BJP, ally NCP fielded late Ajit Pawar's son Parth, while the Shiv Sena gave opportunity to its party spokesperson Jyoti Waghmare for elections to the Upper House of Parliament.

All these leaders filed their nominations at the Vidhan Bhavan, the state legislature complex, located in south Mumbai on the last day of submission of papers. The process was open till 3 pm.

Polling will be held on March 16 between 9 am and 4 pm, and counting is scheduled to commence at 5 pm the same day. Members of legislative assemblies form the electoral college for Rajya Sabha polls.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded party general secretary Vinod Tawde, Union Minister of State for Social Justice Ramdas Athawale, former Nagpur mayor and sitting corporator Maya Chintaman Ivnate and former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MLC Ramrao Wadkute for the biennial elections.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis accompanied the BJP candidates during the filing of nominations.

Tawde, a former MLC, won the 2014 Maharashtra assembly election for the first time and served as the state's education minister. Though he was denied a ticket in the 2019 assembly polls, he was later elevated to the national level in the party and is currently its general secretary.

Wadkute, once considered a close associate of Sharad Pawar in the undivided NCP, hails from the Hatkar community in the Marathwada region. He was earlier elected to the legislative council with Pawar's backing before joining the BJP.

Ivnate served as the first mayor of Nagpur from a tribal background.

The Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena fielded party spokesperson Jyoti Waghmare amid speculations that former Lok Sabha MP Rahul Shewale, a close aide of Shinde, would be nominated to the Upper House of Parliament. He had lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Nationalist Congress Party (SP) chief Sharad Pawar, 85, is set to get a fresh Rajya Sabha term after the Congress on Wednesday declared support to him as the Opposition bloc's candidate from Maharashtra for the lone Rajya Sabha seat it can win out of the total seven.

The decision, announced by AICC general secretary Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday, ended days of speculation about the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate as all three allies - Congress, NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) - had staked claim to the lone seat the bloc can win given their strength in the assembly.

Late Ajit Pawar's son Parth Pawar is in the fray from the ruling NCP. He had earlier tried his electoral luck in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from the Maval constituency, but could not win.

He was recently in the news after a controversial land deal in Pune's Mundhwa sparked outrage.

The Rs 300-crore deal to sell the 40-acre land parcel to Amadea Enterprises LLP, in which Parth holds 99 per cent stakes, came under the scanner after it emerged that the land belongs to the government, and the firm was exempted from paying the stamp duty. The deal was subsequently cancelled.

Parth's mother Sunetra Pawar, who became the deputy CM of Maharashtra following her husband Ajit Pawar's death in a plane crash on January 28, continues to be a Rajya Sabha member. She has not tendered her resignation of the Rajya Sabha membership so far.

The Rajya Sabha members from Maharashtra whose six-year term is ending in April are: Sharad Pawar, Ramdas Athawale, Fauzia Khan of NCP (SP), Rajni Patil (Congress), Priyanka Chaturvedi (Shiv Sena-UBT), and Dhananjay Patil and Bhagwat Karad (both from BJP).

The Election Commission of India has announced elections to 37 Rajya Sabha seats across 10 states. Of these seats, 12 are currently held by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while 25 are with Opposition parties. Rajya Sabha members are elected by MLAs through a system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.

The MVA's combined tally translates into the assured election of one candidate. By this arithmetic, the Mahayuti alliance can win six of the seven seats, subject to cross-voting or strategic transfers under the preferential voting system. PTI ND NP