india

Updated: Sep 06, 2019 13:08 IST

Maharashtra allies the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena have held the first round of seat sharing talks on Wednesday, trying to identify the seats where they will put up candidates in the October elections for the 288-member assembly.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray are already in poll mode and on a statewide tour and given the posturing and muscle flexing from both the sides, the seat sharing discussion is expected to see some hard bargain by both.

In 2014, the BJP and Shiv Sena had contested the assembly polls separately, winning 122 and 63 seats, respectively.

Also read: Uddhav Thackeray blames global warming: ‘Rain is playing T20 instead of Test match’

For Lok Sabha election, held in May this year, the BJP-Sena had sealed a 25-23 seat-sharing plan for the 48 seats in the state.

But going by the posturing, talks for seats may not be a smooth sailing for the parties. Here are four reasons why the negotiation between the two parties is expected to see troubled times:

1. The two parties are yet to decide the ratio in which they will distribute 288 assembly seats between them. They failed to clinch a deal in the last assembly election too. Both parties want to contest maximum number of seats.

2. The Shiv Sena wants to reclaim the big brother status that it lost to the BJP after the 2014 assembly election. Sena nurses the grudge that the BJP asked for equal number of seats to contest in the 2014 assembly election. Sena used to get more seats in state polls before 2014, but entry of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in the national picture altered this equation.

3. Both the parties have laid claim to the chief minister’s post. BJP currently has Devendra Fadnavis as the chief minister, but Sena wants its young leader Aditya Thackeray, who could be the first leader from his family to contest election, to get that position. This is an issue which remains unresolved.

4. The BJP and the Sena will have to accommodate another ally Republican Party of India of union minister Ramdas Athawale. He was with the BJP in the previous election and the Sena doesn’t want to concede much space to him. The BJP is in favour of keeping RPI within NDA fold and insists that both the BJP and the Sena leave some seats from their share for the RPI.