Presidential poll: Cross-voting fears in Maharashtra Congress, NCP

As lawmakers from Maharashtra gear up to vote on Monday to elect the countrys next president there are concerns among the opposition parties over the possibility of crossvotingMLAs and MPs form the electoral college to elect the President of IndiaThe Nationalist Congress Party NCP and Congress the two main opposition parties in Maharashtra have already held meetings with their legislators to ensure there is no any crossvoting in favour of the BJPled National Democratic Alliances candidate Droupadi MurmuThe opposition is concerned as Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Sunday claimed that Murmu would get the support of 200 MLAs from the stateWe will manage to get the votes of 200 MLAs for Droupadi Murmu We want a very comfortable win for her he saidFormer Union minister Yashwant Sinha is the candidate of the OppositionNotably crossvoting was held during the Rajya Sabha elections and the Maharashtra Legislative Council polls last monthAll five candidates of the BJP had won the Legislative Council polls held for 10 seats while with its own numbers the BJP could have won only four seats The Shiv Sena and the NCP won two seats each while the Congress could only bag one seatThere are some concerns in the NCP and Congress over guarding their votes The Congress already faced an embarrassment in the Legislative Council election when one of its candidate lost against the BJP We do not want it to happen again a senior Congress leader saidThe BJP currently has 106 MLAs in the 288member Maharashtra Assembly along with 40 MLAs belonging to the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena besides 10 independents who support the BJPWithout crossvoting Murmu cannot get the votes of 200 MLAs as claimed by CM Shinde If Murmu gets 200 votes it will be a further setback for the Congress NCP and the Shiv Sena a political analyst saidThe Uddhav Thackerayled Shiv Sena with 15 MLAs has announced support for MurmuThe NCP and Congress have 53 and 44 MLAs respectivelyOf the total 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra 23 MPs belong to the BJP 18 to Shiv Sena four to NCP and one to Congress Of the rest two MPs one belongs to the All India MajlisEIttehadul Muslimeen AIMIM and another is IndependentVarious political parties in the state are also taking extra efforts to ensure none of the votes cast by their MLAs and MPs turn invalid in the presidential electionThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever