The race for Rajya Sabha in Maharashtra has driven Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to schedule a series of meetings on Monday with smaller parties and independents.
Uddhav Thackeray is also set to meet this evening senior leaders of the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition that he leads, before a big meeting of all the coalition MLAs tomorrow.
Mr Thackeray's Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Congress are expected to move all their MLAs to different hotels in Mumbai on Tuesday evening, to protect their votes in the Rajya Sabha election.
All the MLAs of the Shiv Sena (55), NCP (52), and Congress (44) will be sequestered till the vote. Two NCP MLAs - Anil Deshmukh and minister Nawab Malik - are currently in jail, so one seat is lying vacant.
Elections will be held for six Rajya Sabha seats in Maharashtra. Any candidate needs 42 votes to win a Rajya Sabha seat.
The BJP has fielded three candidates, Congress and NCP one each, and the Shiv Sena two.
The ruling alliance has the numbers to win three out of the six Rajya Sabha seats for which 288 MLAs will vote on Friday. The BJP, which had 106 members in the assembly, can win two on its own but has fielded a third, setting up a contest for the sixth seat. The party has nominated Union Minister Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mahadik.
In the sixth Rajya Sabha seat, the contest is between Dhananjay Mahadik and the Shiv Sena's Sanjay Pawar. The BJP needs 13 extra votes to win, while the Sena needs 15 for Sanjay Pawar to win.
Apart from the four main parties, the Assembly has 25 MLAs from smaller parties and Independents.
The NCP has renominated former Union minister Praful Patel while the Congress has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi.
Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar are nominees of Shiv Sena.
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