less than 24 hours after some Shiv Sainiks circulated a sarcastic message on social media expressing reservations over the BJP president Amit Shah’s reported move to skip a visit to Matoshri, Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday made amends and invited Shah to his Bandra residence, an initiative that helped the saffron alliance leaders ease the brewing tension between them over sharing of seats for State Assembly polls.
Though Shah reportedly had no plans to meet Uddhav during his first visit to Mumbai after taking over the reins of the BJP, he readily accepted the Sena president’s invitation and met him at 10 pm. The meeting ended at around 11 pm.
Shah, who was accompanied by State BJP president Devendra Fadnavis, leader of Opposition in State legislative Council Vinod Tawde, senior leader Sudhir Mungantiwar and the party’s in-charge for Maharashtra Om Prakash Mathur, also met Youth Sena leader Aditya Thackeray and discussed issues relating to the forthcoming Assembly elections.
Though what exactly transpired at the meeting was not immediately known, senior BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy said: “It was a courtesy call. No political issue was discussed at the meeting.”
Replying to another question, Rudy denied that there was any rift between the two saffron alliance partners.
“The alliance between the two parties is perfect”.
However, informed Sena sources said that Shah and Uddhav did briefly discuss issues relating to the sharing of seats, but nothing concrete emerged. “The meeting did help remove some misunderstanding between the leaders at the State level,” sources said.
The import of the meeting should be seen in the light of the fact that the two parties have not yet reached any understanding over the number of Assembly seats to be shared by the Sena, BJP and four other constituents in the Mahayuti.
Earlier in the day, Shah left the issue of holding seat-sharing negotiations with Sena leaders to the BJP’s State Core Committee members, who he met shortly after his arrival.
After the meeting, Tawde told reporters: “Uddhav yesterday invited Shah to his residence. Shah will pay a courtesy visit to Uddhav.”
Notwithstanding public posturing to the contrary, the BJP has been hawkish in its approach in the seat-sharing negotiations with Sena. It has in fact been trying to prevail upon the Sena to dump the time-tested seat-sharing late Pramod Mahajan formula evolved in the early nineties for both the lok Sabha and Assembly polls.
Under the Mahajan formula, the BJP has over the past several lok Sabha elections, contested 26 (out of 48 seats), while the Sena has fielded candidates for the remaining 22 seats in the State. In the State Assembly polls involving a total of 288 seats, the seat-sharing formula between the two saffron alliance partners has always been: 171 (Shiv Sena) and 117 BJP.
However, now a dominant BJP has been pushing the Shiv Sena to give it more seats. In the beginning, the State BJP leaders were insisting that Sena share the total number of seats equally - 144: 144 -- with it. It has now scaled down its demand to 135 seats as against the earlier claim for 144 seats.
On its part, the Shiv Sena is no mood to toe the BJP line. It has made it amply clear to the BJP that it would not spare more seats than due to it.
The only agreement that Shiv Sena and BJP have reached is to spare equal number of seats (either eight or nine seats each from their respective quotas) for the four smaller constituents of the Mahayuti.
A day ahead of Shah’s visit to Mumbai on Thursday, Fadnavis had gone on record telling media persons at Nagpur that the BJP was sticking its demand for equal share of seats to contest the Assembly polls.