The Shiv Sena will have to give in to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s demands over seat-sharing in the ‘Mahayuti’ alliance, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar said on Monday.
Addressing a press conference in Kolhapur district, Mr. Pawar said the Sena “was probably not aware” that it had piggybacked on the Modi wave while bagging 18 seats in Maharashtra.
“There is no question of the BJP’s pre-eminence in its alliance with the Sena,” Mr. Pawar said.
The BJP-Sena ‘Mahayuti’ alliance won 42 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats, with the BJP securing 23 seats.
Acknowledging the poor showing of the NCP and the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls, Mr. Pawar said the national results would not necessarily determine the outcome in the coming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
“While it is true that the Congress-NCP coalition has fared badly in the parliamentary polls, it does not mean that the verdict would be repeated in the Assembly elections as well,” he said, expressing the hope that the people of the State would return the ruling Democratic Front alliance to power.
He said the contentious seat-sharing impasse between the Congress and the NCP would be resolved in a few days. The NCP, which contested in 114 seats in 2009, has been demanding more seats on the grounds of its ‘better’ performance in the Lok Sabha polls, in which it secured four seats while the Congress managed only two in the State.
“We will announce our list of candidates soon after discussions,” he said.
Playing down the recent spate of defections from his party, the NCP supremo asserted that the movement of a few leaders had in no way dented the prestige of the party.
“There is no exodus from the NCP … it is only a question of four-five leaders who have not appreciated our advice to firm up their efforts in regional constituencies,” Mr. Pawar said.
The NCP will kick-start its election campaign from Kolhapur on Tuesday.
