Maharashtra BJP’s new legislature Party will meet here on Tuesday to elect — in all certainty — its State party president Devendra Fadnavis as its leader, ahead of the party staking a claim for forming the new Government in the State.
Talking to mediapersons after a meeting of senior State party leaders held at his official residence here on Sunday, former leader of the Opposition in the Assembly and senior State BJP leader Eknath Khadse said: “The BJP’s legislature Party meeting will be held at 4 pm at Vidhan Bhavan on Tuesday (October 28) in the presence of our central leaders”.
Ahead of its legislature Party meeting, Maharashtra BJP has convened a meeting of all its MlAs, MlCs and MPs at the state party headquarters in south Mumbai at 11 am on Tuesday.
At that meeting, BJP’s central observer Rajnath Singh, general secretary in charge of Maharashtra JP Nadda and party’s general secretary Rajiv Pratap Rudi will elicit the views of members from both the Houses of Maharashtra legislature and Parliament on the choice of the party’s legislature Party leader.
“The meeting is an exercise being undertaken by our central leaders to elicit the views of all the legislators and MPs before the legislature Party meeting to be held later that evening,” Khadse said.
With Union Minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari having opted out of the chief ministerial race, there are at least five contenders for the post like Devendra Fadnavis, Pankaja Munde, Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde and Sudhir Mungantiwar.
Of them, Fadnavis, who enjoys the confidence of both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP’s national president Amit Shah, is the front runner for the post.
Queried as to when the BJP’s legislature Party leader would meet Maharashtra Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao and stake a claim for the formation of the government, Khadse said that the party would so either late on Tuesday or on the following morning.
“We will prove our majority in the house if the Governor desires,” he said, in a clear indication of the BJP’s keenness to stake its claim for forming the government claim irrespective of its deliberations with its erstwhile saffron ally Shiv Sena on a power-sharing arrangement.
While the BJP has readied a tentative list of 20 BJP MlAs as probable candidates to be included in the BJP Cabinet, at least six of these names are certain to be sworn in at Thursday’s ceremony are: Devendra Fadnavis, Vinod Tawde, Eknath Khadse, Sudhir Mungantiwar, and Pankaja Munde.
Ahead of Tuesday’s legislature party meeting, the BJP is continuing to play hardball with the Sena on the issue of sharing power with the latter in the State.
“Contrary to the speculation in the media, no backroom parleys are going on between the BJP and Sena over the post-poll arrangement between us. Though the BJP had told that its leaders would hold talks with us on the issue of sharing power with us from Monday (October 27), we have not so far received any invitation for talks from our erstwhile ally. After all it is for the BJP to decide to whether it wants to involve us in the next government or not,” a close aide of Sena president Uddhav Thackeray said.