Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 24: The crucial seat-sharing issue is facing hiccups in Maharashtra, the state with the second highest number of seats in the Lok Sabha after Uttar Pradesh, in both the ruling “Mahayuti” and the opposition “Maha Vikas Aghadi” (MVA) camps.
While the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party has threatened to walk-out of the NDA if Vijay Shivtare of the Shiv Sena (Shinde) faction was not disciplined, Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) party on Sunday severed its ties with the MVA leader Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray faction” and issued an ultimatum to complete the seat-sharing formula in the next couple of days.
With less than a month to go before the state votes in the first phase of the polling, the alliance partners are squabbling over seat sharing in both the camps. Maharashtra votes for its 48 parliamentary seats in five phases between 19 April and 20 May. Although the process of filing nominations has already begun for the first phase, the Mahayuti alliance comprising the BJP, he Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP faces challenges in Baramati, Maval, Amravati, Ahmednagar, Beed, and Nashik, with multiple claimants for each of these seats, according to sources in the alliance.
The NCP faction led by the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Sunday threatened to walk out of the NDA if the Shinde faction failed to take action against Vijay Shivtare, a former MLA, who made derogatory remarks against Ajit Pawar.
In the Pawar family bastion of Baramati, Shivtare has announced his decision to contest as an independent if the seat was not taken away from the NCP. Baramati is currently represented by Supriya Sule, daughter of NCP founder Sharad Pawar and cousin of Ajit Pawar. The deputy CM is keen to field his wife Sunetra Pawar from this seat against his cousin sister.
As a result, of the Mahayuti alliance partners, only the BJP has announced its first list of candidates. Its list released this month had 20 candidates — including Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, Piyush Goyal from Mumbai North, and Pankaja Munde from Beed.
According to sources in the alliance, the partners have so far agreed on a 31:13:4 seat formula for the BJP, the Shiv Sena, and the Ajit Pawar’s NCP.
Speaking about seat-sharing talks Thursday, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told reporters that the alliance would declare all its candidates “very soon.” “We have completed 80 percent of the seat sharing (talks). I’m confident that the remaining 20 percent will also be done very soon,” he said.
After Shivtare once again targeted Ajit Pawar and vowed to file his nomination papers from the Baramati Lok Sabha seat, the NCP on Sunday threatened to quit the ruling Mahayuti alliance if the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde did not sack him.
“’We have been demanding that action should be taken against Vijay Shivtare after his outburst against the deputy chief minister last week. On Sunday, he has again used objectionable language against our leader. Now, only his sacking by the Shiv Sena will pacify us. Otherwise, we are contemplating leaving the Mahayuti alliance,” a NCP leader of Ajit Pawar faction said.
Two-time Shiv Sena ex-MLA from Purandar, Shivtare plans to throw his hat in the Baramati Lok Sabha ring, a Pawar bastion for five decades, from where the two Maratha strongmen will flex their political muscle through their proxies — Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar and Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule.
The battle for Baramati assumes huge significance as the Mahayuti led by the BJP, NCP (Ajit Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) believe they can end dominance of an ageing Sharad Pawar in this fortress by defeating Sule, a three-time MP from the constituency.
It is in this context that the political grapevine has it that Shivtare is entering the arena to cut into Sunetra Pawar’s votes at the behest of Sharad Pawar who has controlled the state’s politics from Baramati ever since he became Maharashtra’s chief minister for the first time in July 1978.
Shivtare, an arch adversary of Pawar’s estranged nephew Ajit, reports suggest, met the senior Pawar in Baramati at the Namo Rozgar Melava (job fair), which Ajit Pawar organised early this month to curry favour with Baramati voters. According to the grapevine, it was during their tete-a-tete that Sharad Pawar convinced Shivtare to enter the fray.
A few days later, Shivtare went public with his decision to contest the Baramati election and ever since then the NCP (Ajit Pawar) and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena are at loggerheads with each other. “I want to finish the dominance of both the Pawars in Baramati. I will never become anybody’s tool. I am against Sharad Pawar also,” Shivtare said.
The enmity between the Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena and the NCP is not new as the Shinde faction had earlier threatened to quit its alliance with BJP when the saffron party was making overtures to Ajit Pawar to split the NCP and join the ruling alliance last year. However, the BJP managed to keep both the warring factions together and keep the alliance going so far.
Similar predicament faced the MVA with the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedkar severed severing its ties with the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) on Sunday and issued a March 26 ultimatum to the alliance to conclude seat-sharing talks.
Ambedkar, who had formed the Bhimshakti-Shivshakti alliance with the Sena (UBT) last November, also accused MVA constituents Congress, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Shiv Sena (UBT) of “pursuing their own political interest ignoring smaller parties. The three main partners of the MVA is claimed to have finalised its seat-sharing formula but none has been able to announce its list of candidates because of disagreement over allocation of a few seats.
