Shiv Sena NCP Seat Sharing Discussion
Mumbai: The Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress and the NCP-SP alliance intend to contest 20, 15 and 7 seats respectively in Mumbai in the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections. The exercise in seat allocation, which concluded on Thursday evening, signalled the all-new coalition and its seat-sharing arrangement, finalised with concessions on all sides. Sena (UBT) chief Eknath Shinde said: “We will be fighting 20 seats in Mumbai. Other than that, discussions are still ongoing, and a final decision will be made before Friday. The states that will be left uncontested by us are in the northern region of the state.”
Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi begins seat-sharing talks for the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra.
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The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi coalition (MVA) is first weighing their seat-sharing formula in Mumbai in pursuit of victory in the state assembly elections ahead.
On Saturday, the Shiv Sena (UBT) staked claims on 20 seats. The Congress was seeking 15 seats and the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) wanted to contest seven seats. The parties are likely to finalise the seat-sharing formula next week.
In the 2019 assembly polls, the three groups together won 20 of 36 seats in Mumbai and had originally planned to discuss distributing the 16 remaining seats. The undivided Shiv Sena had won 14 seats, the Congress could win four, and the undivided NCP and Samajwadi Party had won one seat each.
Since the two factions of Shiv Sena and NCP split over the last two years, eight MLAs are backing the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction, while NCP-SP has no MLAs as Nawab Malik, who had been elected from Anushakti Nagar, switched to the Ajit Pawar-led NCP.
MVA insiders said that the Shiv Sena (UBT) is not really budging on contesting 20 seats. ‘What the party thinks is that by going it alone we are in a much better position than our allies and, therefore, we deserve the top seats in the 36 assembly seats we have in city,’ said a senior Thackeray faction leader.
The vibes are that the Shiv Sena (UBT) will hog more seats in Mumbai. The indirect confirmation came from the NCP-SP leader and former minister Jitendra Awhad who had indicated that: ‘Shiv Sena will remain a big brother when it comes to sharing of seats in Mumbai.’
Shiv Sena is aiming to contest on all 14 seats [that it had won in 2019] except Chandivali, which it wants to exchange with Vandre East [from Congress],” said an official from the MVA. Next to Chandivali, Shiv Sena MLA Dilip Lande had won from the constituency in 2019, before jumping the ship after the Raj-Thackeray split earlier this year.
Thackeray is likely to field Varun Sardesai from Vandre East, won previously by Congress MLA Zeeshan Siddique, who is likely to ‘defect’ to the NCP led by Ajit Pawar who is also closely associated with the BJP. Sardesai is the secretary of Yuva Sena, a youth wing of the party and Thackeray’s nephew.
Congress senior leaders have expressed their satisfaction in the deal, since the party lost the Chandivali seat by a margin of 409 votes. The Congress candidate in the byelection was Arif Naseem Khan, senior leader of the party who had contested from this seat twice before 2019. “Naseem Khan is keen to contest from the seat again,” said a Mumbai-based Congress leader.
‘We have discussed how the seat-sharing formula will be. It is just who won the seat how many times,’ said a senior MVA leader, adding, ‘All the three parties need the seats that they have won earlier elections.’
The three parties are, however, open to the Samajwadi Party (SP) being part of the alliance – but the SP was not invited to the seat-sharing talks on 27 November. The SP wants to contest 12 seats in Maharashtra, including two to three in Mumbai, although no formal conversation has taken place so far and the SP is part of the MVA.