Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and ex-Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray (File).
Mumbai:
Congress’s efforts to seal a seat-sharing deal for the general elections have taken another step forward, sources said on Friday, following talks with Maharashtra allies for 39 of the 48 seats in the state.
This follows Rahul Gandhi’s outreach to Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party’s Sharad Pawar’s faction. The party has already tied up with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party for 17 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party for three of the seven seats in Delhi.
The Congress has also approached Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool to restart talks that failed last month after the Bengal chief minister refused to back down from the offer of two of the state’s 42 seats.
Congress sources told NDTV that the party had reduced its demand to five seats – but a Trinamool spokesperson downplayed this, declaring, “Even with binoculars we are not able to find a third seat for the Congress”.
Read | “Even with binoculars…”: Trinamool source on Congress’s demand for 5 seats
In Maharashtra, India’s allies are understood to be at loggerheads over eight seats, including two in Mumbai – South Central and North West – which both the Sena (UBT) and the Congress want.
Sources said the delay is also being driven by the demands of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi chief Prakash Ambedkar, who wants five seats. Mr Ambedkar’s party contested 47 seats in the 2019 elections, but failed to win any. VBA also contested 236 seats in the 2019 assembly elections and could not open its account.
The Sena (then undivided and allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party) contested 23 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and won 18, including Mumbai South Central and North West. The Congress contested 25 seats and won only Chandrapur, while Sharad Pawar’s NCP (then undivided) contested 19 seats and won four.
The BJP dominated that election and won 23 out of the 25 seats it contested.
Congress’s efforts to seal the seat-share deal in Maharashtra – a crucial state because it sends the highest number of MPs to the Lower House after UP – have been complicated by the recent defection of Ashok Chavan.
Read | “Changing Congress is not the problem, change is not”: Ashok Chavan to NDTV
The former chief minister resigned within 48 hours and joined the BJP, and is now a Rajya Sabha MP. This happened when senior leader Milind Deora walked out and joined Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s forces.
Mr Thackeray’s party, aware that the Congress is on the backfoot given its poor electoral record recently, wants a larger share of Lok Sabha seats from the state capital Mumbai, sources have said.
However, all parties involved are keen to work out an agreement, as they understand that the 2024 election is, in many ways, a fight for survival against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election-winning machine, the BJP.
Formed in June, the block has already lost Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) – a founding member – and Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtra Lok Dal, which has influence among the Jat community in western UP. Both JDU and RLD have formed an alliance with BJP.
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