Amid a prediction by an exit poll that the ruling BJP would win 143 seats — just two seats short of a majority in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly, its ally Shiv Sena on Wednesday went to town, saying that it would bag more than 100 seats and that its senior alliance partner BJP would not be able to form the next Government in the State, without its support.
A day ahead of the counting of votes in the State Assembly polls, Shiv Sena MP and spokesperson Sanjay Raut said: “ The Shiv Sena will win more than 100 seats (out of the total 288 seats in the State). Even if it wins more number of seats than us, the BJP will not be able to form a Government in the State without the Shiv Sena’s support”.
“The BJP had won 122 seats in the 2014 Assembly polls. It is but natural that the BJP wants to win more number of seats than it had bagged last time. Being in the seat of power, it (BJP) has additional wherewithal that gives it additional advantage,” Raut said, while speaking to a leading Marathi news channel.
Raut said that both the BJP and Shiv Sena had no alternative to each other and the to saffron parties would form the next Government in the State. “The question is which of the two parities (Congress and NCP) would emerge as the principal Opposition party,” he said.
Reiterating that a Shiv Sena man would occupy the post of the Chief Minister in the State, Raut said: “Our party president Uddhav Thackeray has already said that a Sena’s man will be the next Chief Minister of the state. We have full confidence in his (Uddhav’s) leadership and strategy. We all will try out best to achieve his objective".
Given that the BJP is expected to have an upper hand in terms of numbers in the new Assembly, Raut’s remarks are being seen as mere political posturing than anything else.
In the various exit polls — results of which came out on the evening of October 21, the pollsters have predicted that the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance would win anywhere from 166 seats to 243 seats in the Assembly polls. The two exit polls have given individual winning tallies of the saffron alliance partners have said that while the BJP would win anywhere from 130 to 140 on its own strength, the Shiv Sena would win anywhere from 70 to 113 seats.
In the 2014 polls, the BJP and Shiv Sena — which had contested separately — had on 122 and 63 seats respectively.