MVA seat-sharing: Joint meeting in Pune on Feb 24; no consensus yet on 8 seats

Pawar on Wednesday called a meeting of all senior party leaders, MPs and MLAs in Pune to discuss the present political situation and chalk out strategy ahead of the upcoming general elections. “We were briefed about the ongoing seat-sharing talks by our state president Jayant Patil as he has been participating in those talks. There will be a meeting between Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray in next one or two days where a plan about holding joint rallies will be discussed. Congress too will be participating in it,” said Baramati Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule.

Sule said that the opposition front will be holding joint rallies across the state and a detailed plan about how to go about it will be discussed between all the parties in the alliance. Senior NCP (SP) leader and Pune city chief Prashant Jagtap said that the first joint rally of opposition INDIA front will be held in Pune on February 24.

Despite the preparations for campaigning and even after several rounds of discussions, the opposition is still struggling on eight Lok Sabha seats in the state where it is failing to reach a consensus. On January 1, Sule had claimed that the MVA has finalised the seat-sharing and it was to be announced within the next 8-10 days.

“We are on right track about finalising the seat-sharing. We have finalised almost 40 seats. Now, there is a new entrant of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and on certain seats there is an issue about the candidates. But it will be solved soon,” a senior Congress leader said.

Among the seats which are still under discussion include Bhandara-Gondiya, Wardha, Akola, Mumbai North West, Kolhapur, Pune etc.

Earlier on Wednesday morning, reports of a possible merger of Sharad Pawar’s NCP with Congress started making rounds in political corridors. The NCP was quick to deny any such move. “We had no such discussion about the merger neither there is any such proposal in front of us,” former minister and MLC Shashikant Shinde said.