New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party (SP) has rebelled against its INDIA-bloc allies in Maharashtra. It unilaterally declared its candidates on five assembly seats on Saturday for the November 20 Maharashtra assembly elections. On his
two-day visit to Maharashtra from Friday, SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav also used the occasion to formally launch his party’s campaign and addressed two public meetings. Initially looking for an alliance with the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of Congress-NCP (Sharad Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray), the SP’s unilateral decision to declare its candidates for five assembly seats have heated up the political temperature of the state.
SP has declared candidates for Shivaji Nagar, Bhiwandi East, Bhiwandi West, Dhule City and Malegaon. And while there has been no official reaction from the MVA or the Congress regarding Yadav’s decision, it is being seen as a pressure tactic by them. The SP had demanded 12 seats from the MVA, and according to party insiders, was ready to compromise on even five or six seats. However, it seems, the MVA does not want to part with even that number of seats.
SP already has two sitting MLAs in Abu Azmi from Shivaji Nagar and Rais Shaikh from Bhiwandi East. The SP believes it has more influence than Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM and if MVA joins hands with it, can easily win all its seats. However, the most important question here is whether MVA would want to give so much space to a UP based party? And if not, how much damage can the SP and AIMIM cause to the MVA candidates?
While SP contesting separately from the MVA is a bad optics for the INDIA-bloc, it can also prove electorally disastrous as seen in the case of Haryana where Congress in its arrogance had refused to go in alliance with the smaller parties like AAP, SP etc. In the end there was just a difference of 0.9 vote percentage between the Congress and BJP, translating
into a difference of 11 seats and BJP forming a third consecutive government. Neither would the Congress or the MVA want to repeat the mistake of Haryana and nor would the SP want to be responsible for causing their downfall. So, not only should MVA get SP to join their bandwagon, it also needs to quickly resolve the seat sharing impasse between itself.
The MVA seat sharing
While it is believed that matters have been resolved on over 260 seats, the distribution of 28 seats has become a bone of contention between the three allies. According to information, the Uddhav Thackeray – led Shiv Sena is demanding that it should contest the equal number of 100 assembly seats with Congress and the remaining 88 go to Sharad Pawar’s party, the Congress thinks otherwise and stressing that it should contest at least 120 seats in light of its recent performance in the Lok Sabha elections. Congress won 13 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats it contested. On the other hand, the Shiv Sena (UBT) had contested the most 21 seats in the MVA, but it could win only nine seats. The winning strike rate of Congress was much better.
But Thackeray is demanding at least 100 seats on the ground that his party (undivided Shiv Sena) had contested 124 seats in 2019 and he should encash the sympathy factor after “BJP engineered a split in Shiv Sena”. Congress Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala met Uddhav Thackery at the latter’s residence on Saturday to iron out the differences. Meanwhile, there are also about 10 seats on which Sharad Pawar feels that his party could give a better fight to the Mahayuti candidate than the allies and is trying to convince them to change hands.
Mahayuti problems
On the other hand, things are also stuck between the Mahayuti partners who are struggling to reach consensus on about 30 to 40 seats. Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Devendra Fadnavis flew down to New Delhi on Friday night and held a meeting with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah to resolve these differences. According to media reports, the meeting with Shah has been quite fruitful and the final seat sharing arrangements between the allies are likely to be announced in a day or two.
While BJP is expected to contest the maximum 150-155 seats, the Shiv Sena could get to fight on 80-85 seats, while Ajit Pawar’s NCP, considered to be the weakest link in the chain can get anything around 50 seats. Pawar is demanding more seats and has been one of the chief reasons that Mahayuti is still stuck with the seat sharing talks. However, BJP has already announced its first list of candidates on Sunday.
PM Modi and campaign
Meanwhile, while Shah is busy sorting out differences with the allies, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun his campaign for Maharashtra. On Saturday, PM inaugurated projects worth 56,000 crores in Mumbai, Thane and Washim area. During his Mumbai visit he also flagged metro services between the BKC and JVLR and also travelled in the metro train from BKC to Santa Cruz. Besides worshipping in Washim’s Jagdamba Temple, PM also met the beneficiaries of Mahayuti government’s Ladki Bahin Yojana.
