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Updated: Oct 28, 2019 23:04 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not withdraw its claim on the chief minister’s post in Maharashtra or agree to a rotation of the top job as demanded by ally Shiv Sena, but it is open to considering other demands, senior BJP leaders in Delhi said on Monday amid a perceived tussle between the coalition partners over the formation of a government in the western state.

The message came on the day chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and senior Shiv Sena leader Diwakar Raote held separate meetings with governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, setting off speculation that the relations between the two allies might have taken a turn for the worse over a “50-50” power-sharing formula that the regional party said the BJP had agreed to in the past.

Fadnavis drove to the Raj Bhavan in south Mumbai at 11am and met Koshyari, who was sworn in as the 19th governor of Maharashtra last month. Transport minister Raote met the governor at around 10:30 am.

While Raote said he “did not hold a discussion regarding any political issue”, Fadnavis said in a tweet that he conveyed his Diwali greetings to the governor and “apprised him on the current [political] scenario”. Raj Bhavan officials said both had came to wish Koshyari on the occasion of Diwali.

“These are just posturing done by these two parties and serve no concrete purpose,” said political analyst Hemant Desai.

With 105 seats in the 288-member assembly, the BJP is the single largest party in the state, but it is 40 MLAs short of the halfway mark. The Sena, a pre-poll ally of the BJP, is the second largest party with 56 seats. Together, they have a majority. A resurgent Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) won 54 seats and the Congress bagged 44 seats.

After the election results, the Sena has raised a pitch for “equal sharing” of power and wants CMs from both sides with each having a two-and-half-year tenure. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, too, has talked of the 50-50 formula, which, he says, was “agreed upon” between himself, BJP president Amit Shah, and chief minister Deverndra Fadnavis ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

But a senior BJP functionary in Delhi, who asked not to be identified, said,“There will be a BJP chief minister in Maharashtra... Prime Minister Narendra Modi dropped enough hints in his victory speech at the BJP headquarters on October 24 that Devendra Fadnavis will continue to be the CM.”

In his address to BJP workers at the party headquarters the day results were announced (October 24), PM Modi said, “I believe the next governments, under the leadership of [Haryana chief minister] Manohar Lal Khattar and Devendra Fadnavis over five years will take Haryana and Maharashtra to new heights of development.”

BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao struck a similar note and pointed out that the BJP emerged as the single largest party “by a wide margin”. “With this public support, Maharashtra will soon get a BJP-led state government that will last a full five year term and fulfil people’s aspirations. Maharashtra results are an endorsement of public support for a BJP-led government,” he told PTI.

On the other hand, the Sena kept up pressure on the BJP on Monday, reminding it about the power-sharing deal and taking a dig at the BJP-led central government over a sluggish economy.

Asked what would happen if the BJP was to renege on the power-sharing formula, Shiv Sena parliamentarian Sanjay Raut said, “BJP evokes name of Ram. You [the BJP] are going to build the Ram temple. Ram was satyavachani [embodiment of truth], so they should speak the truth on this [formula].”

The BJP and the Sena are now separately wooing independents and smaller parties as that would give them greater bargaining power. On Monday, independent MLAs Ravi Rana (from Badnera, Amravati) and Geeta Jain (from Mira-Bhayender) offered their support to the BJP.

Earlier in the day, the Sena also used a famous dialogue from the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay to target the Centre over the economy, wanting to know why there was so much “silence” in markets on Diwali and wondered if worse days were ahead.

“...Itna sannata kyon hai bhai? (why is there such silence) is the question resonating everywhere on ‘silence’ over the future of the country and Maharashtra,” the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

A BJP leader from Mumbai was critical of the stand taken by the Sena mouthpiece. “We have often told the Sena to avoid criticism of the government they are part of but so far they have been ignored us. We will have to take serious cognisance of the same,” the leader, who asked not to be named, said.

BJP leaders in Delhi saw Sena’s muscle-flexing for the CM’s post as a precursor to its eventual demand for plum portfolios such as home, finance, urban development, revenue and rural development, among others, which are currently with either Fadnavis or other BJP ministers in his government.

The Sena holds the portfolios of transport, industries and environment, among others, which are considered less influential in the state. In the outgoing government, the Sena has just six out of 25 Cabinet berths and seven out of 18 minister of state portfolios.

“We expect the government formation debate to come down to the division of portfolios and we may concede some space to accommodate the Sena,” a second BJP leader in Delhi said. The BJP has not ruled out a deputy CM’s position for Aaditya Thackeray, the son of Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, who made his successful electoral debut this month.

The BJP does not want to concede the “big brother” status it secured from the Sena in Maharashtra, said the BJP functionary in Delhi cited above. The Sena and the BJP shared 288 seats in a 171-117 arrangement in 2009, but the pact was broken in the 2014 assembly election when the BJP demanded equal number of seats. The two could not agree, and fought separately. Eventually, the BJP got more seats than the Sena — 122 to 63. It also got the CM’s post for the first time following a reunion between the two sides after the elections.

This time, the BJP fielded 152 candidates and the Sena 124.