assembly-elections

Updated: Sep 27, 2019 10:21 IST

The Bharatiya Janata Party has almost finalised a seat sharing agreement with Shiv Sena for assembly election due next month in Maharashtra, and an announcement is expected on Sunday, a senior BJP leader said.

The BJP will retain the ‘big brother’ status in the alliance and is expected to get around 150-155 seats to contest, the leader added.

The party faced the 2014 assembly election without an alliance with Sena, furled candidates in 260 out of 288 seats, and won 122 seats. Shiv Sena had fielded candidates in 282 seats in the last assembly election, and won 63 of them.

“The chief minister will be from BJP. Sena may get deputy chief minister’s post,” the leader quoted above said.

The Shiv Sena may get 120-125 seats to contest against its demand that the 288 assembly seats be distributed in 50:50 ratio. Sena also wanted a rotation of the chief minister post, a demand that the BJP declined.

“Remaining 8-18 seats may go to allies such as RPI of Ramdas Athawale and Rashtriya Samaj Paksha of Mahadev Jankar,” the BJP leader said. “There are some other prospective allies too, but their candidates may contest the election on BJP symbol.”

The core group of Maharashtra BJP, including chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and others, met BJP chief Amit Shah at party headquarters to sort out the seat sharing pact and finalise candidates for seats.

A final announcement about alliance is expected over the weekend. The central election committee of the BJP is also expected to meet on Sunday to announce candidates for around 100 seats of Maharashtra.