JOIN USShinde-led Sena, BJP to contest Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha and local bodies polls together
In a significant development in Maharashtra politics, though on expected lines, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and BJP have sealed a larger pre-poll agreement to contest together the 2023 local bodies polls and the 2024 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections.
The development comes at a time when the new Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is completing a year after it overthrew the Maha Vikas Aghadi government created by Sharad Pawar and led by Uddhav Thackeray.
The decision was taken on Sunday night when chief minister Shinde, and deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis met union home minister and BJP’s chief strategist Amit Shah in New Delhi.
On Sunday evening, Shinde flew into the national capital from Pune while Fadnavis came from Nagpur.
They returned to Maharashtra on Monday after which both of them have separately confirmed the development.
The 2023 local bodies polls, which include the big corporation of Mumbai, would be a sort of setting the plan in motion ahead of next year’s general elections.
The Shiv Sena-BJP formation would take on the MVA which comprises the Congress, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP and Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT).
“The Shiv Sena and BJP have decided to contest the local bodies polls, Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha polls together,” Shinde tweeted after his return to Mumbai.
“We have held detailed deliberations and decided to contest the polls together…we discussed increasing the coordination right up to the district to taluka level,” Fadnavis told reporters in Mumbai.
The seat-sharing formula would be decided in the due course of time.
However, the immediate step would be to expand the council-of-ministers, which too have been approved by the BJP high-command and finer details are being worked out.
In 2019, the BJP contested the Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena and won 41 seats - with BJP contesting 25 seats and winning 23 and Shiv Sena fighting 23 seats and winning 18 of them. As far as the Vidhan Sabha polls are concerned, the BJP contested 164 seats and won 105, while the Shiv Sena bagged 56 seats after contesting 124 seats
In June 2022, the Shiv Sena split - Shinde-led faction allying with BJP while the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) is part of MVA.
After the Shiv Sena split, of the 18 MPs, Shinde commands a strength of 13 while five are with Thackeray. If one looks at the Vidhan Sabha, of the 56 who got elected in 2019, the larger chunk of 40 of the total 56 are with Shinde and rest 16 with Thackeray.