Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Tuesday arrived in New Delhi ahead of his scheduled meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The meeting comes amid strong buzz around a possible tie-up between Thackeray’s party and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Maharashtra ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Thackeray also met BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde ahead of his meeting with Shah.
The BJP’s move to get MNS on board is being seen as an attempt to cause a division in the Marathi vote bank that is still seen as backing the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena. The Indian Express cited sources as claiming that the BJP may concede the prestigious South Mumbai seat to the MNS for the Lok Sabha elections.
The matter was brought up for discussion during a meeting of the central leadership in Delhi on Monday which was also attended by Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and state BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule.
According to a party leader privy to the developments, the BJP is keen on expanding its alliance to get all like-minded parties on board. The BJP already has alliances with the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena as well as the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP.
For the MNS, a tie-up with the BJP will boost its struggle to regain lost ground in Maharashtra. Formed in 2005 after Raj’s conflict with Uddhav, the MNS won 13 Assembly seats in 2009, cementing its position as a strong voice of Maharashtra.
However, the party continued to lose hold in subsequent elections and could win just one seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. the party won six corporators in the 2017 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls. All but one eventually joined the then undivided Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray.