Three MVA allies along with Ambedkar-led VBA hold meeting over seat-sharing for Lok Sabha elections 2024

Pic: PTI File

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), Wednesday held a meeting in Mumbai to discuss seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha elections 2024, with the three allies inviting Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) for talks.

The meeting, which was held at a private hotel in Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) area of the city, lasted about three hours. However, what transpired at the meeting could not be known immediately, newswire PTI reported.

Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats, the second-highest in the country after Uttar Pradesh's 80.

The MVA constituents - Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) headed by Uddhav Thackeray and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) led by Sharad Pawar - have been holding hectic parleys since the last several days to reach a consensus on seat-sharing.

Ahead of the MVA meeting here, senior Congress leader and former minister Balasaheb Thorat separately met Ambedkar to hold talks. Talking to reporters, Thorat himself admitted it.

Ambedkar has already announced his candidates for Sangli and Wardha Lok Sabha constituencies, which the Congress generally contests.

Although the VBA failed to win even a single Lok Sabha or assembly seat in the 2019 elections, the vote split it caused underscored the party's nuisance value, prompting the three MVA allies to invite Ambedkar for talks and negotiate a deal, political analysts said.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 18 seats and it is firm on getting to contest the same number of seats. Its leader Sanjay Raut has already hinted at his party's willingness to exchange some seats, but the party is unlikely to bring down the number of constituencies from where it wants to fight.

Raut and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) leader and MLA Jitendra Awhad have publicly appealed to Ambedkar not to take any step that would benefit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

According to political analysts, the three MVA allies want to keep Ambedkar on their side to avoid any possibility of vote division.

In the 2019 general elections, Ambedkar had fielded a candidate against Congress leader and former chief minister Ashok Chavan. The VBA candidate got more than 1.60 lakh votes, and Chavan lost the election against the BJP by a margin of nearly 40,000 votes, the analysts pointed out.

The ruling BJP has set the target of winning more than 45 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashtra along with its allies. (With inputs from PTI)