Having decided to fight all the 48 Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra as a third front, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party will contest 44 seats and four seats respectively in the State.
Thirteen days ahead of the first phase of the four-phased polls in the state, the BSP and SP on Thursday announced the seat-sharing pact between them. Under the pact, the Samajwadi Party will contest Mumbai north-west, Dhule, Nanded and Beed seats.
Of the 44 seats that it is contesting in the State, the BSP will release its first list of 19 seats.
The seats for which the BSP it has named candidates include: Bhandara-Gondia, Chandrapur, Ramtek, Nagpur, Washim, Amravati, Buldhana, Hingoli, Akolam, Parbhani, Osmanabad, Latur and Solapur.
Mayawati will launch the BSP-SP launch in Maharashtra at a rally in Nagpur on April 4. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is expected to attend the rally.
Both the BSP and SP do not have the following in Maharashtra that they can influence the Lok Sabha poll outcome. For instance, the BSP had contested all the 48 lok Sabha polls in the state. The Mayawati-led party polled a pathetic 2.61 per cent – which 2.22 per cent votes less than the votes it had polled in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.