BJP-Shiv Sena seat sharing: Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and other top leaders, including JP Nadda are meeting in New Delhi today to decide the number of seats the party is willing to offer to the Shiv Sena for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
The BJP has a lot of brainstorming to do as the state unit of the party is reportedly in favour of contesting the polls without any partnership with the Uddhav Thackeray-led party.
Today’s meeting is also being attended by the top state leaders Pankaja Munde and Girish Mahajan who are in the party’s core committee for Maharashtra.
Sources said that while Devendra Fadnavis is in favour of an alliance with Shiv Sena, Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil believes that party should go alone. Several state leaders are of the view that the BJP can win a majority on its own riding on the overwhelming success in Lok Sabha polls.
As far as seat sharing is concerned, the Shiv Sena has maintained that anything less than a 50:50 formula is unacceptable to it, the BJP is said to be in mood to offer anything above 120 out of 288 seats up for grabs in the Maharashtra Assembly. Both the parties earlier pledged to leave 18 seats for smaller parties like Ramdas Athawale’s Republic Party of India (RPI).
