The Shiv Sena and BJP on Wednesday night moved closer to inking a seat-sharing deal for the October 15 Maharashtra Assembly polls, after they held intense negotiations with aggrieved allies in the Maha-Yuti all through the day, in a bid to placate the four smaller parties that had at one stage threatened to walk out of the grand alliance in protest against the lesser share of seats offered to them.
Talking to reporters after holding an hour-long talk with Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray, Mahadev Jankar of the Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, one of the four constituents in the Maha-Yuti, said late on Wednesday night that the saffron alliance had agreed to give 14 seats to four smaller parties as against the promised 18 seats.
“Speaking on behalf of both the Sena and the BJP, Uddhavji offered to give 14 seats against the reduced share of seven offered to us last night. The offer of 14 seats is acceptable to all the four smaller constituents of Maha-Yuti,” Jankar said after the meeting.
Following the agreement reached between the Sena and the four smaller parties, Uddhav was scheduled to hold one more round of talks with the BJP leaders to finalise the final seat-sharing formula.
Given that the Sena is in no mood to bring down its tally of 151 seats, the final seat-sharing formula among the Sena, BJP and four parties is expected to be 151 (Sena), 123 (BJP) and 14 (four smaller parties). “At best, the Sena might bring down its tally to 150. In such an event, the BJP would get 124 seats instead of 123 seats,” sources in the saffron alliance said.
The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is expected to make a formal announcement about the seat-sharing arrangement between them and four parties in the Maha-Yuti on Thursday.
A day after they angered the four allies with an offer of seven seats as against the promised 18 seats, the Shiv Sena and BJP partners scaled up their offer and engaged the leaders of the four smaller alliance partners --the RPI (A), Raju Shetti-led Swabhimani Paksha, the Jankar-led Rashtriya Samaj Paksha and Vinayak Mete-led Shiv Sangram - in fresh round of seat-sharing negotiations.
Hours after Thackeray held a meeting with the leaders of the four allies in the Maha-Yuti and assured them that they would be given a respectable number of seats, the BJP followed up with another round of talks with the leaders of the four parties later in the night.
However, the talks between the BJP leaders - on whom the onus of bringing around the four allies lay -remained inconclusive.
Informed sources said that the BJP had mooted a new seat-sharing formula, under which the Sena and BJP would contest 151 seats and 127 seats respectively, while ten seats would be allotted to the four allies. However, the four allies had not agreed to the new formula suggested by the BJP.
Talking to reporters after the leaders of the four parties held talks with the BJP at night, Shetti said that the four parties had given the BJP and Sena 12-hours to sort out their differences over the allotment of seats to the four smaller partners.
“last night, we were all upset after the Sena-BJP alliance offered mere seven seats to four parties as against 18 seats offered to us. During the negotiations we had with the Sena and BJP all through the day today, we told the two parties that they could reduce our share by three to four seats from the 18 seats promised earlier, But, we have made it clear to the two parties that they need to hold further talks between them later in the night and revert to us by tomorrow morning as to how many seats they would offer us,” Shetti said.
Shetti said that in the event of the saffron alliance partners not agreeing to allot 14 to 15 seats to the four allies, including Swabhimani Paksha, they would break away from the Maha-Yuti and contest the State Assembly polls on their own strength.
later in the night, the Sena president held one more round of talks with the leaders of the four parties. It was at this meeting that Uddhav agreed to set aside 14 seats for the four smaller allies.