The ruling alliance in Maharashtra won all nine seats it contested in the biennial elections to 11 Legislative Council seats on Friday, a victory that will boost the party’s morale ahead of the assembly polls. However, the opposition MVA suffered a setback when a candidate supported by Sharad Pawar’s party lost. 12 candidates competed in the high-stakes elections earlier in the day, and the results were released in the evening. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won five seats, while the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) led by Ajit Pawar and the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena won two seats each.All three parties are part of the Mahayuti (grand alliance) in power, which did not fare well in the most recent Lok Sabha elections, taking home only 17 of the 48 seats available in Maharashtra. The winners of the elections were Congress candidate Pradnya Satav and close Shiv Sena (UBT) aide Milind Narvekar of the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).
But the MVA suffered a setback when Jayant Patil, the Peasants and Workers’ Party (PWP) candidate, lost the polls. Patil was backed by the Nationalist Congress Party (SP), led by Sharad Pawar. The MVA, which won 30 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, is made up of the Shiv Sena (UBT), the Congress, the NCP (SP), and a few smaller parties.