Ajit Pawar testing BJP’s nerve

NCP chief Ajit Pawar

If NDA partner Shiv Sena is to be believed, the seat-sharing formula for the remaining 28 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra will be out by Sunday or Monday. Insiders said it wasn't Sena that delayed the announcement, but the unrelenting demand from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for at least 10 seats that complicated matters for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which wants to contest more than 30 seats.

The BJP has made its 20 candidates public but is still fine-tuning the sharing formula for the remaining 28 seats, in which all three allies have stakes. Apart from Baramati, Parbhani, Shirur, and Raigad, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP has demanded Gadchiroli, Bhandara-Gondia, Dharashiv, Satara, Nashik, Buldhana, and Yavatmal-Washim. The rank and file of all three partners are anxious about the final formula for the polls, which will be notified on Saturday afternoon by the Election Commission of India.

The BJP hadn't included disputed seats in its first list, including some that the BJP has been holding. The BJP contested 25 seats in 2019, and its then ally, the undivided Sena, was given 23. The inclusion of NCP's breakaway faction, the third partner, has made the sharing tougher than before. Both Sena and NCP have been expecting the numbers they had contested in the last elections, but that was cut down to the number of MPs the factions have or the count their undivided parties won in 2019. The formula, mostly leaked by people in the BJP, has been dismissed by the Sena and NCP factions.

An NCP leader told mid-day that his party would not agree to anything less than nine seats. Party's senior leader Praful Patel, who won a Rajya Sabha seat recently, has been preparing to contest from his home ground Bhandara-Gondia. But the BJP has its MP there in Patel's native and also in Gadchiroli that his party colleague Dharamraobaba Atram wants for himself.

Sena spokesperson and MLA Sanjay Shirsat said there could be a dispute on two-three seats, but that will be sorted out by Saturday. "The Sena and NCP seats (candidates) will be announced latest by Sunday or Monday morning," he told the media, saying that his party had insisted on retaining Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad). It is said that the Eknath Shinde-led Sena expected at least 13, which is a matching number for its strength in the LS. But it is unlikely to get more than one seat in Mumbai and is sparring with the BJP to retain Thane.

28
No. of LS seats NDA will announce candidates for

Mumbai South for MNS?

Even as Speaker Rahul Narwekar is said to be the BJP's candidate from Mumbai South, some developments indicated that the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) was in talks with the NDA, especially the BJP, to have this seat for its senior leader Bala Nandgaonkar. If things fall into place, Nandgaonkar would be the NDA's candidate. However, it is learned that the BJP wants MNS to contest on its election symbol, a condition Raj Thackeray didn't concede to.