The BJP said no formal decision has yet been made on the allocation of seats.
Nagpur:
BJP state chairman Chandrashekhar Bawankule said on Saturday that the Bharatiya Janta Party and Shiv Sena, led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, will contest all of Maharashtra’s 288 parliamentary seats and 48 Lok Sabha seats along with other NDA members.
He said no formal decision had been made on the allocation of seats so far.
His comments came amid reports that the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena had reached an unfair deal on seat allocation for upcoming polls.
“The BJP and Shiv Sena will compete with other members of the NDA for 48 Lok Sabha seats and 288 Vidhan Sabha seats,” Mr Bawankule said. Parliamentary elections will be held in Maharashtra in October 2024.
He said the BJP and Shiv Sena had started preparing to win 200 seats under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and under the coordination of Chief Minister Shindh and Deputy Chief Minister Devon Rafad Navis.
The Election Commission recently recognized the faction led by Shinde as the Shiv Sena and assigned it to the party’s bow and arrow election symbol.
Asked if the BJP would compete for 240 seats and the Shiv Sena for 48 seats (288 seats in total), Mr Bawankule said, “There was a conference on that and there will be conferences in the future”.
“A clip was propagated by distorting it. The BJP-Shiv Sena coalition will compete for 288 seats and win 200. So far no (seat sharing) formula has been decided. The central and national leadership will decide on it,” He was responding to the report.
Meanwhile, Jayant Patil, chairman of Maharashtra’s National Congress party, said the 2024 parliamentary polls would be all about the BJP versus Maha Vika Aghadi, while the presence of the Shinde-led Shiv Sena would is a question mark.
Speaking to reporters in Mumbai, Patil said he thought the BJP would contest all 288 parliamentary seats on its logo, as he expressed confidence that the Shinde bloc would cease to exist.
(Aside from the title, this story is unedited by NDTV staff and published via a syndicated feed.)
