Four ‘missing’ NCP MLAs ‘rescued’ from Haryana by ‘Youth NCP’ members

In yet another dramatic ‘rescue’ operation, members of the Youth NCP are reported to have brought four missing MLAs back to Mumbai from Haryana. News portal ‘Kattanews’ tweeted, “All the four missing NCP MLA's, Narhari Zirwal, Anil Patil, Vinayak Daroda & Vinayak Daulat are rescued by the NCP youth president Dhiraj Sharma & Sonia Duhan. These MLAs were trapped in a Haryana hotel. NCP youth wing conducted the successful rescue operation.”

Dhiraj Sharma, NCP youth wing President said all 4 MLA's wanted to stay with Sharad Pawar and they have full faith in his leadership, the portal added.

Earlier, Shiv Sena workers had stopped two NCP MLAs from flying out of Mumbai. They were brought back from the airport, where the Shiv Sena union is strong.

The rebel NCP leader Ajit Dada Pawar is thus said to be left with just one of the 54 MLAs elected on NCP ticket. It was earlier speculated that he had the support of 35 MLAs. But the rebels seem to be confident that the MLAs would eventually vote for a ‘stable’ BJP government.

BJP, which won 105 seats in the Assembly and fell 40 short of the majority mark in the 288-member House, claims to have the support of 15 Independent MLAs and MLAs belonging to smaller parties. Thus it needed the support of at least 25 NCP MLAs to reach the magic figure.

As in Karnataka, the party is said to have launched the ‘Operation Lotus’ and opened its purse strings in a bid to poach MLAs from other parties.