After the settlement of seat sharing talks between the BJP, Shiv Sena and four other allies, BJP president Amit Shah is to embark next week on a three-day tour of Maharashtra to oversee campaign preparation and interact with party workers and leaders in the poll-bound State.
Shah will be visiting the State from September 16 and will stay there for three days. Besides Mumbai, the he is also likely to visit Pune to take the stock of poll preparations, according to BJP leaders.Talks between the Shiv Sena and the BJP-led ‘Mahayuti’ alliance to contest the Maharashtra Assembly elections may come to “ a conclusion” after talks over disputed 10-15 seats are wrapped up “positively” , sources said referring to seat allocation to four smaller allies.
Efforts are underway to meet the demands of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana leader Raju Shetty and RPI led by Ramdas Athawale, Rashtriya Samaj Paksh and lok Sangram.Shiv Sena and the BJP would hold final round of discussions on seat sharing after seat allocation among other ‘Mahayuti’ alliance partners is clinched.
The BJP is understood to have maintained that it would contest 144 of the 288 Assembly seats in Maharasthra in contrast to 119 seats it contested in 2009 Assembly poll.
To quell speculations on rift between the BJP and Shiv Sena, BJP president Amit Shah had met Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on his first visit to Mumbai on September 4 after taking over as the party president. The day after, Shiv Sena maintained that Uddhav was not in the CM race. BJP has impressed that CM’s post will go to the party winning larger number of seats in the Assembly polls.
Incidently, the BJP is unlikely to project its chief ministerial candidate in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand- the third State that may go to polls this year.