Rahul Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray
Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in Maharashtra in the next few months and all the political parties have started preparations. The Congress-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has also started talks with allies over seat sharing. It is being said that from seat sharing to the face of the Chief Minister of the state, there is almost a consensus between the three parties involved in the alliance.
A meeting of Maha Vikas Aghadi was held at Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s house in Delhi regarding the assembly elections. The roadmap for the upcoming elections was decided in the meeting. Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP leader Sharad Pawar attended Kharge’s residence in Delhi. At present, a consensus is being formed in the meeting regarding the post of Chief Minister. Shiv Sena leader and former chief minister Uddhav Thackeray could be the face of the chief ministership from MVA.
The conversation begins on seat sharing
Formal talks on the distribution of seats in the grand alliance have started from Wednesday. It is believed that the Congress, which is part of the grand alliance, will contest the elections in the most number of seats. The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray group) will contest the second position and then the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) group will contest the third position.
According to sources, the meeting also decided to finalize the seat distribution for the elections early next month. Also, selection of candidates should be based on probability of victory rather than previous election performance. The source did not rule out the possibility of exchanging some seats between the alliance partners.
The performance of Congress in the Lok Sabha was excellent
In the Lok Sabha elections that ended in June, Congress’s performance in Maharashtra was excellent. Contesting the elections with the MVA alliance, the Congress fielded candidates on 17 seats and won 13 seats. While Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won 9 seats and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) won 8 seats.
Discussions on seat sharing in the alliance gained momentum when Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) leader Uddhav Thackeray met Congress President Kharge, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and Congress Organization (General Secretary) KC Venugopal and some other leaders of the Bharat Alliance. No. Thackeray was accompanied by his son Aditya and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut during this meeting. After the meeting, Rahul said that MVA will fight the elections with unity and win.
In the year 2019, the undivided Shiv Sena won 56 seats last time in the 288-seat assembly elections in Maharashtra. While undivided NCP got 54 seats and Congress 45 seats.
