Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 23: The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) on Wednesday officially announced the seat-sharing arrangement among the three alliance partners having equally distributed 85 seats each and the remaining 33 to go to smaller parties to contest for the 288-member Maharashtra state Assembly.
Announcing the arrangements at a press conference on Wednesday evening, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) faction leader Sanjay Raut and the Congress state president Nana Patole said the seat-sharing for Maharashtra has been finalised.
The contentious exercise had apparently concluded after weeks of hectic discussions. The outcome, Shiv Sena had said, was each of the three key allies in the Maha Vikas Aghadi — the Sena UBT, Congress and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) — would contest 85 seats each.
This will take the total to 255. The rest of the state’s 288 seats, 33, would go to the smaller allies of the MVA and some that may be divided between the big three – effectively indicating the formula was just a first draft. Soon after, the Sena (UBT) also released its first list of 65 candidates which too appeared to be tentative as Mr Raut said some of the names were subject to change.
“Our final meeting with Pawar Saheb has ended. He told us to tell the media that MVA’s seat sharing has ended well. We have finalised it in the 85-85-85 formula. That would take us to 270. Then the rest of the 18 seats will be given to the friends,” Sanjay Raut said. Nana Patole repeated the same message in Hindi.
But when it was pointed out that the 85 formula adds up to 255 and not 270, Sena’s Anil Desai improvised: “We have to prepare for filling the form and AB form has to be given, so an agreement has been made on 85-85-85. The rest will be given to small friendly parties after some discussion. Whatever remains will be divided among us.”
The MVA allies, after a lengthy meeting on Tuesday that ran past midnight, had resumed this morning, with veteran leader Sharad Pawar mediating between the Congress and Shiv Sena UBT, which had hit a deadlock over a handful of seats in Mumbai, Nashik and Vidarbha.
Sources had said there was still no consensus on 15 seats in North Maharashtra, Vidarbha and Mumbai — among them South Nagpur, Amravati, Mumbai’s Ghatkopar West, Byculla, Versova, Kurla and Bandra East; and North Maharashtra’s Parola-Aerodual and the Nashik West seat.
There was disagreement about how many seats each party should contest as well.
While the Sena (UBT) pushed for 100 seats each for itself and the Congress, and 88 for Sharad Pawar’s party, the Congress, ebullient after its Lok Sabha results in the state, held out for 125 seats. Polling for the 288-member Maharashtra assembly will be held in a single phase on November 20 and the counting of votes will be held on November 23.