Mumbai, September 19
The Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have finalised the seat-sharing formula for the October 13 Maharashtra Assembly elections. Announcing this at a joint press conference today, leaders of both the parties said the Shiv Sena will contest 169 of the 288 seats in the Assembly, while the BJP will field its candidates on the remaining 119 seats.
As per the deal, the BJP gets two additional seats from what it got in 2004. The Shiv Sena, which conceded two seats to its ally, has made up by getting the BJP to give up the Guhagar seat held by the party for several years. Ramdas Kadam, the Shiv Sena’s Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing Assembly, is expected to contest from the segment. However, the arrangement has not gone down well with the BJP cadre who are protesting the party’s decision to give up Guhagar. Supporters of
Vinay Natu, the three-time BJP MLA from Guhagar, arrived in Mumbai on Friday evening and created a ruckus outside the party office. “We will make Natu understand that he had to give up the seat to keep the alliance going,” BJP MP Gopinath Munde told reporters.
Apart from the two extra seats, the BJP is also said to have managed the Ghatkopar seat in Mumbai for Poonam Rao, daughter of Pramod Mahajan. “The final decision to field Poonam has to be taken by party president Nitin Gadkari,” Munde said.
According to the new arrangment, the two parties would not project a chief ministerial candidate. The Sena, which has been itching to project Uddhav Thackeray as the next CM in
case the alliance wins the elections, has been forced to backtrack. In 2004, both the outfits had agreed that the CM would be from the party that bags the highest number of seats.
Sena’s executive president Uddhav Thackeray, who was present at the joint press conference, said his father Bal Thackeray would not be campaigning during the elections. “He will, however, join the victory rally,” the younger Thackeray said.
Both Munde and Thackeray said they would focus on a number of issues like the shortage of power in the state, suicides by farmers and rising inflation as part of their joint campaign. Munde added that the BJP would announce its first list of candidates in New Delhi.
