A day after the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) leaders claimed that their seat-sharing was proceeding smoothly, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedkar — an MVA constituent — struck a discordant note, demanding that Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil be allowed to contest from the Jalna Lok Sabha seat.
Despite not having a single MP in Maharashtra, Mr. Ambedkar, whose stand appears to have thrown a spanner in the MVA works, skipped the Opposition meeting on Wednesday, while sending a list of specific demands to the core MVA parties (Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar’s NCP) which, including nominating 15 OBC candidates and three candidates from religious minorities.
The VBA’s demand to give a ticket to Mr. Jarange-Patil, who has recently been accused by the ruling BJP of being an ‘agent’ of Sharad Pawar’s NCP faction, is likely to embarrass Mr. Pawar.
Four agendas
“The VBA’s prime agenda remains that the divisive BJP-RSS should be defeated and all like-minded parties should come together and fight in unison against the BJP. It has proposed four major agendas to the MVA, that Manoj Jarange-Patil [should be given a ticket] from Jalna and Dr. Abhijit Vaidya from Pune,” said a post uploaded on X by the VBA’s official handle.
“Taking into account the hide-and-seek tactics and condescending attitude of the MVA towards the VBA, we had prepared a list of constituencies where we had invested and prepared ourselves to contest with full force if the MVA and VBA alliance doesn’t take place,” read the post.
Mr. Ambedkar’s party sent these demands through the VBA’s Vice-President, Prof. Dhairyavardhan Pundkar, who provided the MVA with the VBA’s preferred list of constituencies which it had earlier prepared in the event they had to go it alone.
Stating that the VBA was “not strictly adamant on these seats”, Mr. Ambedkar said he hoped fruitful discussions would take place on these constituencies with the three MVA parties.
“The MVA has communicated to us in the meeting that they will have an internal discussion and very soon both MVA and VBA will sit again for seat-sharing to topple the BJP-RSS,” read the VBA’s post.
According to observers, the VBA’s latest set of demands are to put pressure on the Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP faction and assert itself within the coalition.
While Mr. Ambedkar formed an alliance with Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) early last year, he had often expressed his frustrations at the Congress dragging its feet over inducting the VBA into the opposition MVA coalition in Maharashtra.
Despite the VBA finally being inducted last month, Mr. Ambedkar has remained ambivalent of whether his party was indeed a constituent or not — stating that the seat-sharing would be decided only after the three core MVA parties had finished with their process.
Both the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP have remained chary over inducting the VBA given that in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Mr. Ambedkar’s party, then allied with the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM, had played havoc by fragmenting the Ambedkarite-minority votes that traditionally went to the Congress and the NCP, causing defeats of Congress candidates in at least nine-ten Lok Sabha seats.
