After ending its 25-year alliance with the Shiv Sena, the BJP today announced its "Mission 145" to rival its former ally's "Mission 150", which means the party wants to win at least 145 of 288 seats in the October 15 Maharashtra polls.
Here are the latest developments:
An unattached BJP is reportedly ready to announce its first list of 190 candidates for the Maharashtra election. Sources said the party will contest about 250 of the 288 seats and leave the rest for its smaller allies.
The BJP and Shiv Sena split yesterday after days of bickering over seat-sharing for the polls. The Shiv Sena, which wanted to contest 151 seats, was described as inflexible by the BJP.
"They refused to scale down their seats. It was heart-rending to part ways with the Sena," BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy, who is in charge of Maharashtra, told NDTV today.
The Shiv Sena has lashed out at the BJP for dumping it. "Our other alliance parties wanted the Sena-BJP combine to continue. More than that, it was what the 11 crore people of Maharashtra wanted. Those who trampled these sentiments are enemies of Maharashtra," the party said in its newspaper Saamna.
The Shiv Sena wants the chief minister's post for its chief Uddhav Thackeray, one of the conditions that the BJP had refused to accept.
Uddhav Thackeray will not contest the state elections. Neither will his son Aditya who made his political debut negotiating with the BJP this time. Aditya is underage at 24.
The Sena-BJP's success in the May national election proved to be a turning point in their ties. Pressing for more seats than it has ever contested in Maharashtra, the BJP made it clear that it was not ready to play second fiddle anymore.
The BJP has emphatically denied any talks with the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar, which ended its alliance with the the state's ruling Congress just an hour after the BJP-Sena split. "Why should there be an alliance with NCP?" said BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
The Congress has already announced a list of 118 candidates - a move that the NCP claims precipitated the end of their partnership, since it was done without consultation.
For the first time in decades, the BJP, Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party will contest separately, making it a four-cornered contest in Maharashtra with Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or MNS providing the fifth angle.
