The state assembly elections are due later this year.
The gloves seem to be off between the Shiv Sena and the BJP after their runaway success in the Lok Sabha polls. The Shiv Sena has taken umbrage to the BJP's claim that the 288 seats in the Maharashtra assembly will be shared equally between the two parties after setting aside 18 seats for their smaller allies.
The state assembly elections are due later this year.
The Shiv Sena has objected to this proposal as the BJP wants its four smaller allies, namely, the RPI faction led by Ramdas Athavale, Mahadeo Jankar's Rashtriya Samaj Party (RSP), farmer leader Sadabhau Khot's Rayat Kranti and Vinayak Mete's Shivasangram to contest on its lotus symbol. This in effect, means that if elected, these legislators will belong to the BJP.
Revenue minister and senior BJP leader Chandrakantdada Patil said that the Sena and BJP would fight for 135 seats each after setting aside 18 for their smaller allies.
A senior Shiv Sena leader said party president Uddhav Thackeray would raise the issue with the BJP leadership. "The BJP is going back on its word. They must set aside 144 seats for us and then accomodate its allies from their own quota. After all, these smaller parties are entirely the allies of the BJP, as they had ditched the Shiv Sena in 2014 after our alliance with the BJP was snapped. If they contest on the BJP's symbol, this in effect, means they are BJP legislators if elected," he said.
However, a senior BJP minister rubisshed these claims. "In the press conference where the Shiv Sena and BJP's tie up for the Lok Sabha polls was announced, it was declared that the two parties would contest an equal number of seats after leaving aside a share for these smaller allies," he said.
The BJP minister said however, these smaller parties were unikely to get 18 seats as claimed by Patil, with a more realistic figure likely to be 14.
Meanwhile, Jankar, who is the animal husbandry and dairy development minister in the Devendra Fadnavis-led state government, said his party would not contest on the BJP symbol. Water resources minister Girish Mahajan said they were insisting on these parties putting up candidates on the lotus symbol. "We want this… as it increases their chances of victory," said Mahajan.
In 2014, buoyed by it's success in the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP snapped its alliance with the Shiv Sena for the state assembly after a tug-of-war over seat-sharing terms. The party overcame its status as a winnow in Maharashtra to carry the day on the Narendra Modi wave and emerge as the single-largest with 122 seats, followed by the Sena, its erstwhile senior partner, at a distant 63.
Though the Shiv Sena joined the Fadnavis government later, it continued to criticise it and announced they would contest all future polls sans an alliance with the BJP. However, the two parties announced their tie-up before the Lok Sabha elections. While Sena leaders claim that the party will get the chief minister's post after the polls, this has been vehemently denied by senior BJP ministers.
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