Adding tension to the already strained ties with its ally the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray has turned down its demand for 135 seats in the coming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
“I will not break off the alliance. It is a 25-year-old one formed on the basis of Hindutva,” Mr. Thackeray told reporters here on Monday. “But it won’t be possible to give 135 seats to the BJP.” He also disagreed with the BJP’s view that the party with the larger seat share would get the Chief Minister’s post. “This [concept] dates back to the time when the seat-sharing formula too was different,” he said.
BJP’s general secretary in charge of Maharashtra, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, said on Sunday that both the parties should contest an equal number of seats. According to the BJP’s formula, the four smaller allies of the grand Opposition alliance could be given 18 seats and the remaining 270 should be shared equally between the BJP and the Sena.
But the Sena leadership is not ready to give up its demand for 150 seats. In 2009, it contested 169 seats and the BJP 119.
Ever since it won five seats more than the Shiv Sena in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has been demanding more for the Maharashtra polls. Mr. Thackeray said his party stood with the BJP when it set the target of 272 seats in the Lok Sabha. “We contested in 169 seats in the Assembly, so what’s wrong in our setting a target of 150?” he said.
Countering the BJP’s claim that seat sharing talks had hit a deadlock, Mr. Thackeray said he was in contact with Om Prakash Mathur, BJP’s election committee in-charge for Maharashtra and Devendra Fadnavis, State president of the BJP. “Talks are on and I won’t say anything about it until an amicable solution is reached,” he said.
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