Fishing in troubled electoral waters, the Shiv Sena, an alliance partner of the BJP in Maharashtra, has started seat-sharing negotiations with rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar-backed new political party for the 40 legislative Assembly seats, which go to poll in early 2017.
State Shiv Sena president Sudip Tamhankar also said that Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray would be the star campaigner of the party during the election campaigns.
“We have given our proposal of 20 seats to the Goa Suraksha Manch. Now it is up to them to get back to us. We are open to negotiation. We are likely to meet in a day or two over this issue,” Tamhankar said.
The Goa Suraksha Manch, a political party launched on October 2, is the political arm of a regional languages front, promoted by rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar. Velingkar, one of the tallest Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders in the State was sacked as the State sangh chalak for his criticism against the BJP-led coalition Government in Goa and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar for continuation of financial grants from the State Education Ministry for primary schools using English as a medium of instruction.
Velingkar has vowed to defeat the BJP-led coalition Government in the upcoming elections, with the help of the Goa Suraksha Manch, Tamhankar and the Shiv Sena is more than willing to ally with his agenda.
“We along with the Manch will take on this corrupt and non performing BJP Government,” Tamhankar said.
When asked if the alliance, with an obviously anti-BJP political outfit, would upset the equation of the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance in Maharashtra and at the Centre, Tamhankar said: “Of course not. Goa is a different State and the dynamics here are different”.
Sena’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, who has been closely monitoring the poll-related activities of the party in Goa, has already suggested that an alliance with the Velingkar-backed party was a foregone conclusion and now Tamhankar claims it is only a matter of time before a seat sharing arrangement is worked out.
“If there is some clash of opinion over choice of seats, we are more than welcome to change preferences,” Tamhankar said.