Sharad Pawar wants a more inclusive anti-BJP front in Maharashtra for the Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress has finalised its seat-sharing arrangement with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) for the Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra, retaining 26 seats and giving 22 to its electoral ally, party sources said. Any remaining issues -- including seat allotment to smaller parties in the alliance -- will be ironed out in the coming days, they added.
Maharashtra has 48 seats in the Lok Sabha, the second-highest in the country after Uttar Pradesh. The National Democratic Alliance had won 41 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections, leaving the Congress-NCP combine with just 6.
Last month, NCP president Sharad Pawar said that efforts are on to forge a "grand alliance" against the BJP in Maharashtra for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. "We will continue to fight the RSS. We don't agree with their ideology, and all like-minded parties should come together to fight it," news agency PTI had quoted him as saying.
It was in keeping with this idea that the NCP pushed for including the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) into the alliance. Mr Pawar believed it was a good way to prevent a split in the anti-BJP mandate, given that the MNS had secured over one lakh votes in some constituencies.
The suggestion was shot down by the Congress, which held that its ideological differences with the regional party were way too stark for that to happen. "We have ideological differences with MNS, and any kind of electoral tie-up with it would be difficult," Congress state chief Ashok Chavan was quoted as saying by PTI.
The BJP, however, managed to seal an alliance with the Shiv Sena last month -- setting aside three years of bickering with the help of a 50-50 seat-sharing agreement. While Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis admitted that there were a "few differences" between the two parties, a common ideology and history extending over years had ultimately resulted in their union.
(With inputs from PTI)