Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 18: Refusing to learn any lesson from its debacle in Haryana where it refused to align with any other party, the local leaders of the Congress seems to be again trying to play spoilsport in Maharashtra in finalising the sea-sharing formula among the three-party Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA).
In a sign of differences between the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena and the Congress just a month before the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the regional party has said it would not hold seat-sharing discussions with state Congress President Nana Patole.
The development has come a day after the sources within the MVA claimed that the seat-sharing formula had been finalised among the three partners for 263 seats in the 288-member Assembly and only 25 were disputed seats. The sources had also said a discussion on the 25 disputed seats would be resolved through talks among the top leaders of the three parties, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, the Nationalist Congress Party (SP) president Sharad Pawar and the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray.
The sources had said on Thursday that a meeting of alliance partners Congress, the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP and the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena was held on Thursday and good progress was made in seat-sharing discussions. The meeting was attended by Congress Maharashtra President Nana Patole, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leaders Jitendra Awhad, Jayant Patil and Anil Deshmukh, among others.
The remaining 25 seats which remain disputed include five of the 36 Assembly constituencies in Mumbai, including Kurla, Dharavi, Versova and Byculla. The sources said the list of finalised and disputed segments would be sent to Mr Kharge, Mr Thackeray and Mr Pawar who will take a final decision in “two to three days.”
Speaking on Friday, however, Mr Raut said the allies had agreed on only 200 seats and took a dig at Nana Patole without naming him, saying leaders in the Maharashtra Congress leaders are “not capable of taking decisions.” Mr Raut said he had spoken to Congress general secretaries KC Venugopal and Mukul Wasnik and the party’s Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala and would also talk to Rahul Gandhi later in the day.
“The pending decision should be expedited. Very little time is left. Maharashtra Congress leaders are not capable of making decisions. They have to send the list to Delhi frequently and then discussions happen. The decision (on seat-sharing) will have to be taken at the earliest,” he said.
Sources said the differences between the Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Congress arose because the Uddhav Thackeray-led party wanted to contest more seats in the Vidarbha region, which Mr Patole was not willing to concede. Riding high on its performance in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha elections, in which it emerged as the single-largest party with 13 of 48 seats, the Congress is hoping to do well in Vidarbha, where it has had a good track record in previous elections as well. The region is also a stronghold of Mr Patole.
Sources said Mr Chennithala will meet Uddhav Thackeray at his residence in Mumbai to sort out the differences between the parties. While it is unclear what impact the decision of the Shiv Sena (UBT) will have on the Maha Vikas Aghadi, sources said the differences may hurt the coalition in its fight with the ruling Mahayuti alliance.
The opposition alliance was seen to be in the driver’s seat after its performance in the Lok Sabha elections, in which it managed to win 30 constituencies in Maharashtra, but the BJP-Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction)-NCP (Ajit Pawar) faction coalition has been energised after the Haryana results in which the BJP managed to pull off its best-ever performance despite battling anti-incumbency after two straight terms.
The Election Commission announced on Tuesday that the Maharashtra polls will be held in a single phase on November 20, setting the stage for one of the most interesting Assembly contests the state has ever seen.
The last election in 2019 was a fairly straightforward battle between the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena coalition on the one hand and the Congress-NCP alliance on the other. Despite having the numbers to form the government after the results were declared, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance split over the chief minister’s post and Uddhav Thackeray took the top job in the state after forging a coalition with the NCP and the Congress, which were seen as unlikely partners.
A rebellion by Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde led to the government falling in 2022 and Mr Shinde went on to take oath as the chief minister with the BJP’s support. The ruling alliance got a third partner the following year when Ajit Pawar decided to split the NCP and took oath as the deputy chief minister alongside BJP leader and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis.
The contest now is between the Congress, the BJP and two Shiv Senas and NCPs, whose leaders are out to prove they are the real claimants of the original parties’ legacies despite the original symbols and names going to the rebel factions.
The Lok Sabha elections had jolted the ruling coalition, the “Mahayuti” which could win just 17 of the state’s 48 constituencies while the Maha Vikas Aghadi’s tally was 30. The Assembly elections were, thus, seen as an uphill battle for the Mahayuti but appear to have been made easier by the results of the polls in Haryana, where the BJP formed a government – delivering its best-ever performance in the state.