Bengaluru: Maharashtra’s opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance of Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party, and the Shiv Sena-UBT are likely to initiate the prickly task of seat-sharing for the 2024 Lok Sabha and Assembly elections after the outcome of the Karnataka Assembly polls, party leaders said.
The seat sharing negotiations, which could result in friction among the three allies, are intended to put up a united front before the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha polls and the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde in the Assembly elections.
However, already different tunes are being sounded and various permutations-combinations are being floated around as all three parties attempt to corner the highest number of seats for the two elections.
State Congress President Nana Patole said in Solapur on Monday that “there is no disagreement in the MVA on the seat-sharing issue”.
“The MVA is going very strong in the state. In the past three years, we have achieved huge success in uprooting the BJP’s influence here. After the Karnataka polls results, we shall sit together and start the seat-sharing discussions,” he said.
One line of thought in the Congress is that the strongest candidates with highest winning potential, irrespective of which party they belong to must be fielded for the 48 parliamentary and 288 Assembly constituencies.
The other allies – NCP and Shiv Sena-UBT – seem to have differing opinions on this, stressing seat distribution as per their respective perceived strengths in each constituency or the runner-up in the 2019 polls in each seat should be entitled to the first claim.
On reports of certain figures of seat-sharing formula circulated in the media, the three partners have dismissed them as ‘fiction’ and said that nothing is finalised yet.
To a query by a private local TV channel, Patole has called upon the MVA allies to ‘return’ the Congress leaders who have joined the NCP-Sena (UBT).
He reiterated that after the Supreme Court verdict, Shinde would be disqualified and cannot continue as the CM which would lead to the collapse of his 11-month old government.
