Rahul Gandhi dials Uddhav Thackeray amid seat-sharing row in Maharashtra
Sources said the recent exodus of key Congress leaders like Ashok Chavan and Milind Deora has complicated the seat negotiations
With hardly any time left for the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress has intensified its efforts to seal the sear-sharing deal with INDIA bloc allies in Maharashtra which sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday dialled Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and spoke to him for almost an hour to discuss the deadlock over eight of the state’s 48 seats.
According to sources, the Congress is keen on contesting three of Mumbai’s six Lok Sabha seats - Mumbai South Central, Mumbai North Central and Mumbai North West. On the other hand, the Shiv Sena wants to contest 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state, including four in Mumbai - Mumbai South, Mumbai North West, Mumbai North East and Mumbai South Central
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance of the Congress, Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP has managed to reach an agreement on nearly 40 seats but negotiators are stuck on the remaining eight seats.
Sources said the recent exodus of key Congress leaders like former CM Ashok Chavan and former Union minister Milind Deora has complicated the seat negotiations for the MVA constituents. Sources said Thackeray's party wants a greater share in Mumbai seats after the Congress defections.
However, sources assert that Thackeray, Pawar, Rahul and Mallikarjun Kharge are all determined to make it work, aware that for each party, it is a battle for survival.
The undivided Shiv Sena fought 22 of 48 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and won 18, including three in Mumbai. However, Thackeray's party snapped its ties with the BJP months later, after failing to agree on power-sharing arrangement following the Maharashtra state polls.
The MVA government led by Thackeray collapsed in June last year after a split in the Shiv Sena and Eknath Shinde forming a new government with the BJP. Later, the other constituent of MVA, NCP led by Sharad Pawar, also suffered a split with his nephew Ajit Pawar joining the coalition government.