Mahayuti spent Rs 150 crore to get MVA nominees to withdraw from MLC polls, claims Raut

Chaitanya.Marpakwar

Mumbai: The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) on Friday criticised the Mahayuti over the unopposed election of six of its candidates for the MLC polls and alleged that around Rs 150 crore had been spent to force the opposition alliance’s candidates to withdraw.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut claimed that there was a scramble for unopposed elections and a drama of withdrawals, and “for that purpose at least Rs 150 crore was spent in a single day.” Raut alleged that the deals that had taken place in this case were “lethal” to democracy.

NCP (SP) MLA Rohit Pawar targeted NCP’s Vikram Kakade, who was the party candidate from Pune to be elected unopposed on Thursday, for giving Rs 10 crore in loan to Jay Pawar and claimed Kakade had given money to several other candidates. Kakade had on Thursday said his MLC poll affidavit mentioning a Rs 10 crore payment to Jay Pawar, the younger son of Dy CM Sunetra Pawar, was not a loan but an advance payment for a property deal with Jay.

Rohit said, “When I asked for a loan, no one gave us, we had to go to the bank and take a loan… It is new to know that a young professional can give a loan of Rs 10 crore. Why was the loan given, how was it given, was it given? (Kakade) was given an MLC nomination only because of the loan… Kakade has given Rs 1 crore to Rs 1.5 crore to many such people… There is huge use of money.”

Congress state chief Harshvardhan Sapkal too alleged that the governing BJP offered crores to opposition candidates to ensure that the MLC elections were uncontested.

Alleging that the BJP had indulged in horse-trading, Sapkal said the party had “abandoned” all ethical standards and employed every possible tactic to secure withdrawals of candidature. “The BJP does not want democracy. It prefers a ‘nomination system’ rather than an ‘election system’,” he claimed.

Legislative council polls have been scheduled on June 18 for 17 seats in the state from local self-govt body constituencies. Those elected unopposed on Thursday after MVA candidates withdrew from the fray were Arun Lakhani of BJP from the Wardha-Gadchiroli-Chandrapur seat, Ravindra Phatak of the Shiv Sena from Thane, Aniket Tatkare of NCP from Raigad-Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, NCP’s Kakade from Pune, BJP’s Prajakt Tanpure from Ahilyanagar and Shiv Sena’s Dushyant Chaturvedi from Yavatmal.