To resolve disagreements on a seat-sharing plan before the Lok Sabha elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah met on Tuesday with Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, deputy Chief Ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, and important figures from the three ruling parties.
According to information HT has obtained, Shinde’s Shiv Sena has stated that it wants to keep at least the 13 seats that its MPs currently hold. The BJP is only prepared to grant 10 seats, though. In the same vein, the Ajit Pawar-led National Congress Party (NCP) is optimistic about securing eight seats, one of which is Gadchiroli, where it intends to field state minister Dharmarao Baba Atram. Shah stated that he could only assign four seats, one of which was Baramati, the likely site of a confrontation between Pawar’s relative Supriya Sule and his wife Sunetra.
The BJP feels that by running for the 32 open seats, the ruling alliance in parliament would become stronger. Additionally, the BJP is adamant about changing the seats in Parbhani, Nashik, Aurangabad, Osmanabad, and Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg.
The Shinde faction in Mumbai has been insisting on two seats, and the BJP is determined to win Thane, which has historically been a stronghold of the Shiv Sena.
Shah is said to have told his other two allies to settle for fewer seats in the Lok Sabha polls during the late-night discussion, promising to make up for it in the assembly elections later this year.
“Candidates for the remaining seats, including the ones currently controlled by the BJP, should be named by the weekend, except those where there are disagreements of opinion. A BJP leader who wished to remain anonymous stated, “The leaders also talked about how many seats should be given to the three ruling parties. A consensus is anticipated to be reached in the coming days.”
At a public gathering earlier in the day in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Shah asserted that during its ten-year tenure, the Narendra Modi administration has granted funding to Maharashtra totaling about ₹16 lakh crore.
Between 2004 and 2014, the UPA government led by former prime minister Manmohan Singh provided merely ₹1.91 lakh crore, whereas the Modi government allocated ₹7.15 lakh crore, on top of projects valued at ₹8 lakh crore. Sharad Pawar, I defy you to refute my assertion. In Maharashtra, our administration gave food grains to 7 crore people, toilets to 76 lakh houses, and drinking water to 1.20 lakh households,” he stated.
Shah made a plea to the electorate to unseat Imtiyaz Jalil, the sitting MP, because he supports the “Nizam rule.” Along with criticising them for pushing dynastic politics, he also attacked opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray, and MK Stalin. He claimed that the opposition was in a state of denial and had been fighting against everything that served the interests of the nation.
In addition, Shah chaired a meeting in Akola to assess the readiness for six Lok Sabha seats and spoke at a public rally in Jalgaon.
On Wednesday, Shah will wrap up his visit to Maharashtra.