Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): A social media post, which went viral in social media after election of the NDA nominee Draupadi Murmu as President of India suggested that at least 19 non-BJP MLAs voted in her favour in Madhya Pradesh whereas her rival candidate Yashwant Sinha who was united Opposition’s candidate garnered 79 votes. As per the breakup of votes, Murmu polled 146 votes against Yashwant Sinha’s 79 votes from Madhya Pradesh. As many as 5 votes have been declared invalid.
The state assembly’s strength is 230 MLAs consisting of 127 MLAs from the BJP, 96 from the Congress, four independent MLAs, 2 from BSP and one SP MLA.
Notably, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state BJP president VD Sharma both thanked those non-BJP MLAs who extended their support to and voted for Murmu ‘on their conscience call’.
Unhappy over the development a senior Congress leader said, “Even if it is presumed that all the five votes that were declared invalid were of Congress MLAs, at least 12 Congress MLAs voted for Murmu and this is not a good sign for the party when we are going to face the next assembly elections the next year.”
He said if it was presumed that none of the Congress MLAs’ votes were declared invalid and no other non-BJP MLA voted for Sinha then 17 Congress MLAs vote got involved in cross voting in favour of Murmu. One of Congress MLAs Sachin Birala who announced switching over to the BJP last year had announced that he would vote for Murmu.
When contacted the state Congress spokesperson Bhupendra Gupta said, “Until and unless there is any official chart from the ECI we would consider it as a fabricated chart from the BJP’s dirty tricks department. It’s no use to make a comment on any such chart which has not come from any official source.”
(To receive our E-paper on whatsapp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)
