The Congress, which vastly improved its performance but stopped short of a century in Lok Sabha results announced on Tuesday, has added one more MP to its tally.
Vishal Patil, a Congress rebel who won as an independent candidate from Maharashtra, extended support to the party on Thursday.
The Congress won 99 seats in the election. “With Vishal Patil’s support, the Congress’s strength will go up to 100 in Lok Sabha,” Congress MLA Vishwajit Kadam, who had fought for him within the party, said.
The grandson of former Maharashtra chief minister Vasantdada Patil, Vishal Patil won the Lok Sabha election from the Sangli seat, defeating the BJP’s Sanjaykaka Patil.
He had rebelled and contested as an independent after the Sangli parliamentary seat was assigned to the Shiv Sena-UBT in the seat-sharing arrangement among the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners.
In a post on X, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said, “Welcoming the support of elected MP from Sangli, Shri Vishal Patil (@patilvishalvp) to the Congress party”.
The announcement of the Uddhav Thackeray Sena faction’s candidate prior to a seat pact created a rift within the Maharashtra opposition alliance.
The Sena had been urged by the Congress to reevaluate its ruling on several occasions.
Yesterday, Mr. Kharge, Congressmen Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and Vishal Patil and Vishwajit Kadam met, and the independent MP gave the party his letter of support.
Leaders of the Congress said that Vishal Patil would become an associate MP and the party would have 100 members in the Lok Sabha if the secretariat of the legislature approved his designation.
It is also anticipated that Pappu Yadav, another prominent figure from Purnea in Bihar who emerged victorious as an independent, will back the Congress. Prior to the elections, he had combined his own party with the Congress. Pappu Yadav ran as an independent after the RJD’s portion of the Bihar opposition seat deal won the Purnea seat.
