Mumbai: In an interesting development ahead of the assembly elections in Maharshtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is reportedly mulling the option of dumping ally Shiv Sena and fielding its candidates on all the seats in the state.
Sources told Times Now that BJP was apparently preparing to contest from all 288 seats in Maharashtra, in a move indicating that the two allies may fight the polls solo.
Last week, Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil had said that a seat-sharing agreement between his party and Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena had to be “worked out” for the upcoming polls because the present scenario left very few seats for new entrants.
Earlier this year in February, a joint press conference was addressed by BJP president Amit Shah and Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray in which it was announced that the two parties would contest “an equal number of seats” and would leave the rest of the seats for other parties in the NDA.
However, when asked if BJP and Shiv Sena would contest 135 seats each and let smaller parties in the alliance field candidates on the remaining 18 seats, Patil said that the arithmetic for the seat-sharing had to be worked out.
