Congress, AIUDF MLAs voted for Murmu: CM

GUWAHATI: Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday said Congress, Badruddin Ajmal’s AIUDF and Independent MLAs voted for President-elect Droupadi Murmu in Assam, which gave her an extra 22 votes.
“I think this reflects the overwhelming support the President-elect received from the people of Assam, who embraced her as their own candidate,” Sarma said.
The state assembly has 126 members out of which 124 cast their votes. Two legislators from AIUDF, who have not returned from Haj, abstained. One hundred and four MLAs voted in favour of Murmu — 22 more than NDA’s total strength of 82 MLAs at the expense of Yashwant Sinha’s prospects.
Giving the breakup of the 22 extra votes that came from the opposition members, Sarma said, “Out of these 22 extra votes, 15 to 16 votes were from Congress MLAs whose constituencies have voters from Adivasi and tea garden communities and they had in their mind that they must vote for Murmu. The remaining votes came from AIUDF, Independent and other parties.”
He refused to accept that crossvoting by members from Opposition would bring in divisions withins teir respective parties. “In a presidential election, MLAs and MPs vote according to their conscience and not as per their parties’ affiliations. I don’t want to say much or create any political controversy on the voting pattern. I also don’t believe that there will be any division in any political party on this issue,” Sarma said. Congress leader of opposition in the house, Debabrata Saikia, said the party had not considered the votes of three of its rebel MLAs while calculating Sinha’s projections. “The Opposition strength (Congress, AIUDF, one CPM and one Independent) was 44, which reduced to 41 after excluding votes of three Congress rebels. After two AIUDF MLAs abstained, Sinha should have got as many as 39 votes. Instead, he got 20,” Saikia said.
Saikia added that out of 24 Congress MLAs (after excluding the 3 rebels), at least four to nine legislators could have crossvoted and not as many as 16 as claimed by the chief minister. “Members of AIUDF must have crossvoted too,”Saikia added. Assam state Congress president Bhupen Bora also admitted that there was cross-voting in the presidential poll and claimed that at least six MLAs from his party voted in favour of Murmu, defying its stated support for the opposition candidate. He added that the party “will identify them and necessary action will be taken”.
Ajmal had earlier announced that his party would support Murmu but in a turnaround a day before the presidential poll, it had decided to vote for the opposition nominee.