The Shiv Sena today said no seat sharing formula has been discussed with BJP and that any claim that the issue has been put on the table for discussion is baseless.
MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena today said no seat sharing formula has been discussed with BJP and that any claim that the issue has been put on the table for discussion is baseless.
No such talks have been held between the two parties.
This issue had neither come up during the joint meeting of the two parties nor was it discussed in the meeting BJP leader LK Advani had with the Sena leaders. The Shiv Sena and BJP leaders of Maharashtra also have not discussed it, a Shiv Sena spokesman said.
The BJP sources had earlier said that after the patch up meeting recently between the two warring Hindutva parties, they were likely to work out strategies for jointly contesting the 2009 Maharashtra Assembly elections, including power sharing formula, if voted to power.
The BJP had reportedly proposed to the Shiv Sena that the party which gets more number of seats in the election should get the chief ministerial berth for two-and-a-half years of the five year term of Assembly and the other party may hold the post of chief minister for the subsequent period.
The spokesman said no meeting has been fixed between the Shiv Sena and BJP to chalk out electoral strategy.
He also said he was not aware of Uddhav Thackeray making telephonic call to Advani to appeal to him to intervene in the matter.
The spokesman said, "We dont go by what sources in the state BJP have claimed. It is important to us only if a person of Advani's stature makes any such claims."
Replying to a question on the Shiv Sena's choice of prime ministerial candidate, he said his party executive had made it clear that it was agreeable to support any leader of NDA including Advani, Vajpayee or any other candidate the alliance approves of.
The Shiv Sena and BJP had come to a 'virtual split' after the former decided to support UPA candidate Pratibha Patil instead of NDA candidate Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. The Sena gave the plea that Patil was from Maharashtra and she should be supported to uphold Marathi pride.
This is the first time that Shiv Sena had gone to New Delhi to hold patch up talks. Earlier, it was always the BJP which had to come to the negotiating table. Whenever the relations between the BJP and Sena had soured, it was the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan who used to rush to 'Matoshree' to meet Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray to pacify him.
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