Seat-sharing talks between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena over 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra are going to be a stormy affair as the Sena wants an equal share of the pie and is not ready to play second fiddle to the BJP at the national level.
As part of the current arrangements, while the BJP contests 26 Lok Sabha Seats, Sena contests 22; and in the Assembly while the BJP contests 117 seats, Sena contests 171 seats.
However, as the BJP state unit is no mood to accept the Sena’s demand, state BJP president Nitin Gadkari has lobbed the ball in the Centre’s court and asked the central leadership to discuss the issue with the Sena directly. It was also learnt that the BJP’s central leadership has appointed senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu as the interlocutor for seat-sharing talks with the Shiv Sena.
“As far as we are concerned, there is no question of giving two additional seats to Sena. If we have to do that, then the whole basis of seat-sharing talks will have to be changed and it might even affect the seat-sharing arrangement in the Assembly. We don’t think the Sena will be ready for reviewing seat-sharing in the Assembly, a senior BJP leader said.
The only contentious issue is of three seats which have vanished, are newly created or have been merged after the delimitation exercise. One such seat is of South Mumbai. The new South Mumbai comprises old South and South Central Mumbai Lok Sabha seats.
In 2004, the BJP had unsuccessfully contested South Mumbai and the Sena’s lone MP from Mumbai had been elected from South Central Mumbai. So, there is going to be a tug of war between the two parties, the BJP leader pointed out.
More From This Section
Among the other two seats are the newly-created Kalyan in the neighbouring Thane district, and Yavatmal in Vidarbha.
Thane was once represented by the BJP. However, due to lot of resistance from Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the BJP agreed to exchange the seat in the early 1990s. But now it wants to contest the Kalyan seat.
In the 13th Lok Sabha while the BJP won the Yavatmal seat, Sena won the Vashim and now Vashim has merged with Yavatmal, so both parties are hotly contesting each other's claim to contest the Yavatmal seat.
Admitting the issue of these seats is contentious one Sena leader said, real issue between our talk is going to be of the seats of North Mumbai, Jalgaon in Northern Maharashtra and Jalana in Marathwada region on whom we have staked the claim.
It seems BJP is eager to wrap up the seat sharing talks before the party's national council meeting to be held at Nagpur between January 23 to January 25th, Sena is no such hurry and ready to wait till last moment.