Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party has blinked in the first round of brinkmanship, dropped its ultimatum and in a bid to save its alliance, made an announcement that it will give a new proposal for seat sharing to Shiv Sena. To clear all doubts about its intentions, BJP’s former state president and spokesperson Sudhir Mungandiwar said that BJP was merely requesting Sena to take a look at seats that it had not won in the last four polls.
During the day yesterday, it had appeared that the alliance between the BJP and the Shiv Sena was on the verge of collapse. However, after a meeting last evening the two parties announced that they would fight the elections together and that the division of seats would be worked out amicably.
Present at last evening’s meeting were top leaders of the two parties. The meeting followed BJP’s outright rejection of Sena’s latest formula of 119-169 seats.
In the meeting held between BJP in-charge of Maharashtra OP Mathur and Yuva Sena chief Aditya Thackeray here, besides other senior leaders, both sides reiterated their willingness to stick to the alliance.
Later in the night, the Shiv Sena core committee met to discuss the seat-sharing issue. However, no details of the meeting, which was also attended by party president Uddhav Thackeray, were available. The BJP core group will also meet today to discus the stalemate.
Apart from seat-sharing, the other point of contention between the two parties is of projecting Uddhav Thackeray as the next chief ministerial candidate. There has also been no commitment from the BJP on who the candidate will be or from which party.
Bureau Report
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