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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  BJP, Shiv Sena set to continue Maharashtra alliance
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BJP, Shiv Sena set to continue Maharashtra alliance

Under the proposal, the Shiv Sena will get to contest 150 seats and the BJP 126, while 12 seats will go to smaller parties

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray addresses MPs and MLAs during a party meeting in Mumbai on Sunday. Photo: PTIPremium
Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray addresses MPs and MLAs during a party meeting in Mumbai on Sunday. Photo: PTI

Mumbai: The threat of a split in the 25-year-old alliance between the Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Maharashtra seemed to have passed after both parties said on Tuesday they had agreed to a new Sena proposal for allocation of seats for next month’s elections to the state legislature.

“We have told Sena leaders their latest proposal is acceptable to us; however, we will make a formal announcement only after the consultation process is over," said a senior BJP leader who is involved in the negotiations. The BJP leader was referring to discussions with alliance partners.

Under the proposal, the Shiv Sena will get to contest 150 seats and the BJP 126, while 12 seats will go to smaller parties in the Mahayuti, or grand alliance, that is currently in the opposition.

However, both parties are keen to complete formal consultations with the smaller parties like Swabhimani Party, Republican Party of India (Ramdas Athavale faction), Rashtriya Samaj Party and Shiv Sangram Party before making an announcement. A formal press statement had not come from either party at the time of going to press.

But smaller parties in the alliance have opposed the Sena formula of reducing their seats and walked out of seat-sharing talks on Tuesday night. “Though BJP has stayed put, we don’t want to be part of any alliance that is not acceptable to smaller allies," said a BJP leader involved in the negotiations, on condition of anonymity. State BJP spokesman Madhav Bhandari said the future of the alliance still hangs in balance.

During the joint press conference on Tuesday, senior BJP leader and leader of opposition in the state legislative council Vinod Tawde said, “Both parties were positive about continuing the alliance, so a lot of proposals were going back and forth. Now a new proposal has come, we discussed it and final announcement will be made about it after discussions with other parties in Mahayuti."

Shiv Sena general secretary Sanjay Raut said, “A lot of rumour mongering was going on about the fate of the alliance but I believe today’s press conference will remove all misconceptions in your (the media’s) mind."

According to the earlier “final proposal" made by Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, the Shiv Sena was to contest 151 seats, the BJP 119 and smaller allies 18. The BJP rejected the offer and made a counter-proposal for 140 seats for the Shiv Sena, 130 for the BJP and 18 for the others in the alliance.

Assembly elections in the state are scheduled for 15 October and the last date for filing nomination papers is 27 September.

The BJP, emboldened by its victory in the Lok Sabha polls in May—it won 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, the highest by any party since 1984 and a clear majority—has been seeking a higher number of seats to contest in the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena leadership, however, refused to concede the demand, with the party’s mouthpiece Saamna declaring on Monday, “While Delhi is yours, Maharashtra is ours".

The seat-sharing negotiations were seen as a test of leadership for both the parties as this will be the first assembly election since the death of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray and the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan—the original architects of the alliance.

Sujata Anandan, political editor of Hindustan Times in Mumbai and author of Hindu Hriday Samrat, a book on Bal Thackeray said, “the real issue between the two parties was who gets the chief minister’s post and not who gets how many seats to contest. The existing arrangement between the two parties is that whoever has a higher number of legislators will get the chief minister’s post, so both parties wanted more seats to contest in the hope that contesting more seats will give them more legislators."

Prakash Akolkar, political editor of Marathi newspaper Sakal, said, “It seems both parties are heading towards alliance from the grand alliance. Before the Lok Sabha election they got four smaller regional parties on board and this strategy of taking smaller parties along paid handsome dividends as this grand alliance won 42 out of 48 seats in the state. However, now both these parties are getting ready to dump smaller parties or attempting to make them irrelevant."

Elections in Maharashtra, home to India’s commercial capital, are watched closely by businesses.

An economist with a Mumbai-based corporate house, who did not wanted to be named, said, “The sense from various opinion polls we are getting is that the BJP-Sena are headed for a landslide win in Maharashtra if they stick together. This means more seats for the BJP in Rajya Sabha, which is very crucial for pushing reform Bills through."

Members of legislative assemblies also vote in the biennial Rajya Sabha elections. There are 19 MPs from Maharashtra in the Upper House.

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Published: 23 Sep 2014, 02:50 PM IST
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