Facing the media together for the first time in several days, senior Shiv Sena and BJP leaders today said the two parties were "firm" on continuing the alliance as they resumed the deadlocked seat-sharing talks for Maharashtra Assembly polls.
Top state leaders of the two oldest NDA allies sat down for talks ending a tense stand-off, a day after BJP President Amit Shah called up Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in a bid to pull back the 25-year-old alliance from the brink of disintegration.
BJP had yesterday given a fresh proposal to the Sena, seeking for itself 130 of the state's 288 seats, a marginal climbdown from its earlier demand for 135, which its saffron ally had summarily rejected.
In an earlier proposal, BJP had suggested that the two major constituents of 'Mahayuti', a rainbow alliance of six parties, contest 135 seats each, leaving the rest for smaller partners which too had been trashed by Shiv Sena.
Senior Shiv Sena leaders including party MP and spokesman Sanjay Raut, its leader in the Legislative Assembly Subhash Desai and Rajya Sabha member Anil Desai drove down to BJP office in Dadar for the meeting, in an apparent softening of the party's stand after Uddhav's "final offer" of 119 seats to BJP on Sunday.
BJP's Maharashtra election in-charge O P Mathur, state President Devendra Fadvanis, Eknath Khadse and Vinod Tawde, Leaders of Opposition in the Assembly and Legislative Council respectively, were among those involved in the talks.
"Both parties today agreed that the alliance should remain. Both parties are firm that the old alliance should continue," Raut told reporters after the meeting.
"A new proposal came up today and it will be discussed with our other alliance partners later today," he said.
