Ravikiran Deshmukh/Mumbai Mirror
 
Mumbai, Feb 19: Business tycoons Vijay Mallya and Rajkumar Dhoot are wooing political parties in Maharashtra aggressively to get Rajya Sabha nominations from the state which will have seven RS seats up for grabs soon. The Shiv Sena, meanwhile, is pitching for Sena chief Bal Thackeray's daughter-in-law Smita Thackeray.

Sources said Mallya, UB Group's head honcho, had a hush-hush meeting recently with Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray to get the Sena's support for his Rajya Sabha bid. On the other hand, Videocon's Dhoot, who is currently Sena MP in Rajya Sabha, has reportedly fallen out with the Sena leadership because he has always kept a safe distance from the saffron party's activities but is nevertheless optimistic of getting re-elected with the help of other parties.

The fight, according to sources, is for the excess votes belonging to the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party. A candidate needs 37 votes in order to get elected in the first round itself. The Congress and NCP are comfortably placed as, according to this arithmetic, they can easily get two candidates each elected. But the Sena and BJP, which have 52 and 56 members in the Assembly respectively, can ensure the victory of only one candidate each with ease.

Though Mallya has an excellent equation with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Sharad Pawar, the Maratha strongman is apparently in no mood to put his weight behind Mallya because of opposition from within the party. The NCP chief is worried that his party may attract criticism if it supports Mallya because it has all along been criticising the Shiv Sena for sending non-Marathi-speaking people to the Upper House. There is also pressure from within the NCP that its national treasurer R P Trivedi should be sent to the Rajya Sabha.

Smita Thackeray 

The BJP is also keen that two of its candidates should be elected. The names of the party's national spokesperson Prakash Javdekar and Pramod Mahajan's wife Rekha Mahajan have almost been finalised. The BJP needs the Sena's support to get its second candidate elected and therefore is in no position to extend support to anybody else.

Mallya and Dhoot, therefore, are trying to get as much support as possible from Independents and smaller parties like the Peasants and Workers Party, the CPM and Swatantra Bharat Party.

Congress and NCP, interestingly, enjoy the support of 19 Independents, so the support of the leaders of these parties is also crucial for Mallya and Dhoot to win. The two therefore, are also making efforts in this direction, sources said.

Mallya, who's currently RS member from Karnataka, wants to get elected from Maharashtra because the Karnataka Assembly has been dissolved.

The Sena, meanwhile, is keen that Smita Thackeray should be sent to the RS as she has decided to take the plunge into politics after having stayed away from the Sena's activities for a long time.