Uddhav Sena, Congress to Keep All MLAs at Mumbai Hotels After Results

New Delhi/Mumbai: With counting of votes for the Assembly elections and bypolls set to commence at 8 am on Saturday, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) constituents were busy keeping flock together to prevent poaching in case of a hung Assembly scenario. The MVA has decided to house its newly-elected MLAs at a five-star hotel in Mumbai.

Votes polled on November 13 and November 20 for the Jharkhand and Maharashtra state polls, as well as 46 Assembly seats in 13 states and in the Lok Sabha constituencies of Nanded in Maharashtra and Wayanad in Kerala will be counted on Saturday.

The counting of postal ballots will start at 8 am. Early trends will start coming from about 9.15 am and the final picture will begin emerging at about none.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut said: "We have decided to bring all newly-elected MLAs to Mumbai. New MLAs have no provision to stay in Mumbai. So we have decided to make their residential arrangements together."

He claimed that the MVA would win 160 of the 288 seats in the elections and some Independents, who had strong chances of victory, had expressed their desire to support the Opposition bloc.

Raut also alleged that Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis had started to offer “Rs 50-100 crores” to Independents. “It means that the MVA is going to win in the Assembly election,” he said.

Maharashtra Congress in-charge Ramesh Chennithala said: “Considering the BJP’s reputation for breaking Opposition parties, we have decided to bring all victorious candidates to Mumbai by evening. Further course of action will be decided on the circumstances of whether the newly elected members need to be shifted out of Maharashtra or not.”