The BJP and Shiv Sena have nearly finalised their seat-sharing arrangements as Mumbai gears up for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections.
Sources said that the two parties reached an agreement on 200 out of 227 wards in Mumbai for the January 15 election to the country’s wealthiest municipal body.
Another meeting of Mahayuti, the ruling coalition in Maharashtra comprising BJP, Sena, and Ajit Pawar-led NCP, was held at Eknath Shinde’s residence in Thane. The meeting that continued until midnight focused on alliance strategies for local body elections in Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli and Navi Mumbai, sources said.
Several meetings are also lined up today for Mumbai and other municipal body elections, including Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Panvel, Mira-Bhayandar, etc.
In Mumbai, Congress leaders will hold a meeting with Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) party as the grand old party looks for new allies after distancing itself from the Shiv Sena (UBT) over its alliance with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by Raj Thackeray.
Uddhav Thackeray’s party will tie up with the MNS and NCP (Sharad Pawar) for the BMC election, Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut has confirmed.
The NCP (SP)’s inclusion in the Sena (UBT) alliance follows Sharad Pawar rejecting a proposal by his nephew Ajit Pawar’s faction that would have allocated just 35 seats to his party and marked a reunion two years after the uncle-nephew split.
A fresh round of meetings, however, is still on the cards between Sharad Pawar’s daughter, Supriya Sule, and her cousin, Ajit Pawar, to decide the next course of action.
Raj Thackeray will host a meeting of his party leaders at his Shivtirth residence today to finalise the MNS’s election strategy. Campaign issues and candidate names are expected to be discussed at the meeting.
Meanwhile, in Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Sena MLA and minister Sanjay Shirsat will hold a meeting with state minister Chandrakant Bawankule, state minister Atul Save, BJP’s district chief Pishore Shitole, and other senior BJP leaders for the municipal election.
In Mira-Bhayandar, Sena leader and minister Pratap Sarnaik and BJP MLA Narendra Mehta will discuss seat-sharing. Notably, Ajit Pawar’s NCP is planning to contest the elections independently from here.
Panvel will witness a mega gathering of opposition parties, including Sena (UBT), Congress, MNS, NCP (SP), Samajwadi Party, and VBA, during which seat-sharing arrangements and election strategies are expected to be finalised. The meeting will be led by the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP), which had won 23 seats in the last poll.