MUMBAI: Amid talks of cross-voting, three of the 37 Congress MLAs in Maharashtra skipped a meeting called by the party ahead of the legislative council polls on Friday.Zeeshan Siddique, Jitesh Antapurkar and Sanjay Jagtap were absent in the meeting held here on Thursday night.Antapurkar is close to former chief minister Ashok Chavan, who switched to BJP a few months ago, while Zeeshan’s father Baba Siddique joined the Ajit Pawar-led NCP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.Sanjay Jagtap skipped the meeting as he was in ‘wari’ (annual pilgrimage procession) and on his to the temple town of Pandharpur.The party said Jagtap had informed the leadership about his absence.However, Sulabha Khodke, whose husband is a close aide of Ajit Pawar, and Hiraman Khoskar, said to be in touch with the NCP, attended the meeting.Senior Congress leader Nitin Raut told PTI that his party is in a comfortable position.”It is the ruling alliance which is scared which is why they have held their MLAs hostage, something we haven’t done,” he said.Biennial elections to 11 council seats are being held on the Vidhan Bhavan complex. Each winning candidate would need a quota of 23 first-preference votes.Congress has nominated one candidate “Pradnya Satav” and its surplus votes will be distributed to the other two Maha Vikas Aghadi-backed candidates.
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