Mumbai: Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) chief Prakash Ambedakar has asked the constituents of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to distribute the Lok Sabha seats among themselves first and then his party would negotiate with each one of them. His new demand has surprised every constituent, which will force them to rework the seat sharing formula.
As General elections are expected to be announced in March, the MVA, which consists of Sharad Pawar led NCP, Congress and Uddhav Thackeray led Shiv Sena (UBT), is yet to finalise its seat sharing formula.
An insider in the MVA told this newspaper that the VBA chief’s demand is going to further delay the finalisation of the seat sharing. The sources said that the VBA is likely to demand Akola, Amravati, Parbhani, Solapur and Buldhana among others.
The Congress has included Prithviraj Chavan in place of Ashok Chavan in the panel which will negotiate with the alliance partners. Last month, Congress’s Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala had entrusted a responsibility of negotiation with Prakash Ambedkar led VBA and Raju Shetti led Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) to Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole, senior leader Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan. Recently, Ashok Chavan had left the Congress and joined the BJP. This has created a problem in the Congress.
The MVA has so far held two meetings at a five star hotel in South Mumbai. In the last meeting of the MVA, Prakash Ambedkar asked them to prepare Common Minimum Programme (CMP). The MVA is working on the CMP, which is expected to be shared with him in the next meeting on February 21 or 22.
The insider also said that the talks have been completed on 42 seats and the discussion was being held on half a dozen seats including Ramtek, Hingoli, Wardha, Bhiwandi and Shirdi. Besides this, the Congress party has been insisting on exchanging the Mumbai South Central constituency and Mumbai North West Constituency with the Shiv Sena. But the Shiv Sena is not ready to exchange them.
“We have given up the hope for the Mumbai South Central constituency as Anil Desai is preparing to contest from this seat. But we want to exchange the Mumbai North West seat,” a senior Congress leader said.
After Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra is the second biggest state with 48 seats in the Lok Sabha.
