Maharashtra will head into another round of elections in April when seven Rajya Sabha seats fall vacant on April 2 following the end of the tenure of sitting MPs, including Nationalist Congress Party SP chief Sharad Pawar. The contest is expected to be a difficult one for the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi, which is short on numbers in the Assembly and can realistically aim for only one seat if it votes together.

The seven seats going to polls are currently held by four parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party has two members, Dhairyashil Mohan Patil and Bhagwat Karad, and one seat allotted from its quota to Republican Party of India leader Ramdas Athawale. The Sharad Pawar led NCP SP holds two seats through Pawar and Fauzia Khan. The Congress is represented by Rajani Ashokrao Patil, while the Shiv Sena UBT has Priyanka Chaturvedi.

Maharashtra currently has 19 Rajya Sabha members. Of these, the BJP has seven, the Congress and NCP have three each, the NCP SP and Shiv Sena UBT have two each, the Shiv Sena has one, and the Republican Party of India has one.

Rajya Sabha members are elected by MLAs of the state Assembly through a secret ballot system. MLAs vote using paper ballots and rank candidates in order of preference. A candidate needs to secure a fixed quota of votes to be declared elected, and surplus votes are transferred based on preferences until all seats are filled. Although the vote is secret, MLAs are required to show their ballot paper to their party’s authorised agent before casting it, a rule aimed at preventing cross voting.

For the seven Maharashtra seats, the quota works out to 37 votes, assuming all 288 MLAs vote and all votes are valid. The number can change slightly if there are absences or invalid votes.

The ruling Mahayuti alliance is comfortably placed. The BJP has 131 MLAs, the Eknath Shinde led Shiv Sena has 57, and the Ajit Pawar led NCP has 40, taking the alliance’s total strength to 228. This is enough for the ruling combine to win six of the seven Rajya Sabha seats if its votes remain consolidated.

On the opposition side, the Congress with 16 MLAs, the Shiv Sena UBT with 20, and the NCP SP with 10 together account for 46 votes. This is sufficient for only one seat and falls well short of competing for a second unless there is cross voting or abstention from the ruling side.

The election will once again test how firmly the MVA can hold together, as it has room for only one candidate. Any division in opposition votes would further weaken its chances. The ruling alliance, meanwhile, appears set to dominate the polls if its MLAs vote as planned.

The Rajya Sabha election also comes at a time when Sharad Pawar’s political significance has sharpened further after the death of his nephew Ajit Pawar. Pawar in the past has spoken openly about stepping back from electoral politics. After a career spanning more than five decades and 14 contested elections, Pawar said in November last year that he does not plan to contest any more elections once his current Rajya Sabha term ends.

Ajit Pawar’s death has however left a vacuum in the rival NCP faction that aligned with the BJP and Shiv Sena, bringing Sharad Pawar back to the centre of political discussions despite his stated intent to step away from electoral contests. It still needs to be seen if the Maratha strongman be pulled back into the fray for yet another political fight raising questions about whether Pawar will continue to be part of an elected House in the years ahead.