MVA will finalise its seat sharing for Assembly this week: Raut

“Talks on seat-sharing among MVA partners will be held from Wednesday to Friday. The meeting will be held for three consecutive days. The formula regarding which party will contest which seats will be decided and it will be the final decision,” Raut said.

In the recently held Lok Sabha elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in Maharashtra by winning 13 out of 17 seats it contested. The NCP (SP) also won eight out of 10 seats. The Shiv Sena (UBT) was the worst performer among the MVA allies as it won only nine out of 21 seats it contested.

After the Lok Sabha results, the Shiv Sena (UBT) insisted that Uddhav Thackeray should be declared as the MVA’s chief ministerial candidate. However, the Congress and NCP (SP) have rejected the demand and maintained that whichever party has the highest number of MLAs should get the top post.

When asked about the Lok Sabha results, Raut said that the Congress and NCP won seats because Shiv Sena’s votes were transferred to them on the seats where they contested. “We also ceded Kolhapur, Amravati and Ramtek, the seats we traditionally contested, to Congress. Had these seats been with Shiv Sena (UBT), it would have won them for sure. The party workers of Shiv Sena (UBT) also toiled for the NCP (SP), including for the seat of Baramati,. Similarly, we also have to accept that the Congress-NCP votes were transferred to us in a big way,” he said.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule said that the ‘Mahayuti’ alliance has formed consensus over 70 to 80 per sent Assembly seats and the rest seats will be finalised soon. “Mahayuti leaders will soon address a joint press conference to declare our final seat sharing. Leaders of all three parties including chief minister Eknath Shinde, Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar have vowed to win the election unitedly. They are not bargaining on numbers. Instead, we are focusing on fielding winnable candidates,” the BJP leader said.