It was as close as numerically possible. Sonia Gandhi’s personal secretary for 15 years, Ahmed Patel, returned to the Rajya Sabha after getting the bare minimum 44 votes required to make it to the Upper House.
With 43 members of the Congress in the Gujarat Assembly--the gang of MLAs who were sequestered in Karanataka resort--presumably voting for him, where did the deal-breaker 44th vote come from?
The minimum required number came down to 44 after Election Commission disqualified the votes of two dissident MLAs who violated electoral rules by showing the voting slip to Amit Shah. So who cast the clincher?
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The possible candidates:
The first suspect is Nalin Kotadiya.
Supposedly miffed with the BJP over the Patidar issue, party MLA Nalin Kotadiya said in a Facebook post that he had voted for the Congress.
However, the BJP insists that Kotadiya has not cross-voted and is only trying to save his skin from the wrath of Patidars, who have crossed swords with BJP over the demand for reservation.
One of the old Congress allies, Sharad Pawar’s NCP is another possibility. The party has Kandhal Jadeja and Jayant Patel as its MLAs in the Assembly. While the former is on record saying his first preference is the BJP, it is not clear if Jayanth Patel voted for Ahmed Patel according to party whip.
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Another one is Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) with its sole MLA Chhotu Vasava reportedly saying that no instruction had been given by the party and that he voted for the Congress. The national spokesperson for the party however said that Vasava had been instructed to vote for BJP, their new ally.
If we assume that NCP is telling the truth, then either ‘rebel’ BJP MLA Kotadiya or JD(U)’s Vasava is not telling the truth.
Ahmed Patel beat Balwantsinh Rajput, who was till recently the Congress' chief whip in the state Assembly before switching over to BJP, polling 44 votes in the first Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat in two decades which saw a contest instead of official candidates of major parties getting elected unopposed.
A Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist, he has represented Gujarat seven times in Parliament -- three-time as Lok Sabha member from Bharuch and four-time as Rajya Sabha member.
With Agency Inputs
