Amid the seat-sharing turmoil within the ruling Mahayuti alliance, Union Home Minister Amit Shah held a series of election-related meetings with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s partners in Maharashtra - CM Eknath Shinde (Shiv Sena) and Ajit Pawar (NCP) through late Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
According to sources, Mr. Shah is said to have acted ‘firmly’ with the BJP’s coalition partners and the saffron party is expected to stake claim on the maximum number of Lok Sabha seats of the total 48 in the State.
While the division is yet to be announced, leaders within the BJP, requesting anonymity, said that their party could contest on as many as 32-34 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, leaving 10 for Mr. Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction and a mere four, or even less, for the Ajit Pawar’s NCP.
During his two-day tour of the State, Mr. Shah presided over hectic late-night meetings with Mr. Shinde and both the Deputy Chief Ministers, Ajit Pawar and Devendra Fadnavis, to resolve the intense wrangling that has arisen between the three ruling allies.
Both Mr. Shinde and Mr. Pawar met Shah a second time on Wednesday morning.
Mr. Shah is reported to have told his allies to “be reasonable” and not demand more seats just for sake of it, said sources, who also claimed that a consensus had been reached on most of the seats and that the parleys were constructive.
NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) leader Chhagan Bhujbal, meanwhile said, that their party should be accorded the same number of seats as will be given to the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena faction.
“We have only said the same number of seats that are given to the Shinde faction be awarded to us,” said Mr. Bhujbal, while conceding that the BJP had a right to take the manority seats as they were the largest party in Maharashtra.
Prior to the meetings with Mr. Shah, the Shinde camp leaders had repeatedly said they would not contest on anything less than 22 Lok Sabha seats, while the Ajit Pawar-led NCP had demanded 10 seats.
While Ajit Pawar’s NCP presently has just one MP in the form of Sunil Tatkare, the story with Mr. Shinde is different as he has 13 Lok Sabha MPs with him following the split within the Shiv Sena.
Mr. Shinde was intent on his faction leaders contesting the same number of seats (23) as the undivided Shiv Sena had contested on during the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Downplaying differences within the Mahayuti over seat-sharing, senior BJP leader and Maharashtra Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said, “Seat-sharing issues are never discussed before media cameras. A candidate or a party is allotted a seat only after intensive ground surveys and taking into consideration the winnability factor. One doesn’t give seats merely because a particular party asks for it.”
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole took shots at the alleged discomfiture of the Shinde and Ajit Pawar camps over the seat-sharing process.
“Both [Mr. Shinde and Mr. Pawar] are in a bad state after going with the BJP. But they are helpless. The BJP has merely used them for its purposes without giving them anything in return. But they are helpless,” Mr. Patole said.
