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This is an archive article published on September 11, 2019

Explained: Sena and BJP, frenemies in Maharashtra’s Assembly election battle

While a similar tug-of-war in the saffron alliance had been seen before the 2014 elections too, the Sena is more aggressive this year. The reason: The Shiv Sena would like to have as Chief Minister Aaditya Thackeray, the son of party chief Uddhav Thackeray.

Explained: Sena and BJP, frenemies in Maharashtra's Assembly election battle The Sena has rejected the BJP’s initial offer of 110 seats, and has been pushing for at least 144, or half the total 288 seats in the Assembly.

As the countdown to the Maharashtra Assembly elections begins, the familiar jousting for seats among the BJP and Shiv Sena is back. While a similar tug-of-war in the saffron alliance had been seen before the 2014 elections too, the Sena is more aggressive this year. The reason: The Shiv Sena would like to have as Chief Minister Aaditya Thackeray, the son of party chief Uddhav Thackeray. The BJP, on the other hand, doesn’t want to play second fiddle to the Sena. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had told The Indian Express in an interview last month that “there should be no doubt” that he is “coming back as Chief Minister”, and BJP president and Home Minister Amit Shah has announced that Fadnavis “deserves another term to take development work ahead”.

The question of seats

The parties are apparently in the final stage of seat-sharing talks. The Sena has rejected the BJP’s initial offer of 110 seats, and has been pushing for at least 144, or half the total 288 seats in the Assembly. It wants the BJP to accommodate friendly parties in its share of seats. In the 2014 Assembly elections, which the parties fought separately, the BJP had won 122 seats, and the Sena 63. This time, the BJP is looking to contest more than 150 seats.

Earlier understanding

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, with the prospects of an alliance looking bleak, Amit Shah had met Uddhav at Matoshree, the Thackeray family home in Kalanagar, Mumbai. Details of the deal were not made public, but it is understood that the two leaders agreed to share seats equally in the Assembly elections.

However, with a massive Lok Sabha mandate behind it, the BJP now appears to be singing a different tune. The party is believed to have cited the changed scenario, and argued that it is the more popular party in both the Centre and the state. The BJP-Sena swept 41 of the 48 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, with the BJP winning 23 and the Sena 18.

Fishing for Cong-NCP

Each party in the saffron camp would like to win more seats than the other to be able to stake claim to CMship; both are, therefore, working to win over MLAs and popular leaders from the Congress and NCP to their ranks.

More than 10 sitting MLAs, former MLAs, and leaders from the Congress and NCP have already switched to one or the other of the parties. There is greater stress on “importing” leaders for seats at which the saffron aspirants are weak, or which are currently held by the Congress or NCP. Families of long-time Congress loyalist too, are targets for poaching.

Prominent among those who have crossed over are Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil, Abdul Sattar, Harshavardhan Patil, Ganesh Naik, Ranajagjit Singh, Dhananjay Mahadik, Dilip Mane, and Dilip Sopal. The BJP claims more are on the way, and that the party is “in touch” with at least 70 Congress and NCP leaders.

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Signals and pressure

On Monday, the Shiv Sena started to interview aspirants for all 288 seats, signalling that it would be ready to go it alone in case the deal with the BJP does not work out. In July, Aaditya had gone on a 4,000-km Jan Ashirwad Yatra to thank people who had voted for the Sena in the Lok Sabha elections, and to establish direct communication with the electorate.

Aaditya is likely to contest the Worli seat in Mumbai. If he does, he will be the first Thackeray to contest a direct election. Soon after Aaditya’s rally was announced, BJP said Fadnavis would hold a Maha Janadesh Yatra to highlight the achievements of his government and to seek a renewed mandate.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

 

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