Stalemate ends, MVA likely to announce seat-sharing deal today

Top leaders of the Opposition's Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance met in Mumbai late Tuesday night with indications that the seat-sharing arrangement for the November 20 Maharashtra assembly elections has been finalised.

IMAGE: Maha Vikas Aaghadi (MVA) leaders -- Shiv Sena-UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray, NCP-SP chief Sharad Pawar and Congress chief Nana Patole. Photograph: ANI Photo

The announcement was likely to be made on Wednesday with Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray leader Sanjay Raut stating that a press conference would be held.

There was no confirmation from any of the MVA leaders of media reports that the Congress will contest 105, the Shiv Sena-UBT 95 and the Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar 84 of the 288 assembly seats.

The remaining seats would be given to smaller parties in the alliance.

After the talks, especially those between the Shiv Sena-UBT and the Congress, hit a roadblock, senior state Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat first met NCP-SP president Sharad Pawar and then Shiv Sena-UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray.

Later, Thorat and other leaders of the MVA again sat together for a meeting that lasted for over five hours at a luxury hotel here.

Thorat said All India Congress Committee's Maharashtra in-charge, Ramesh Chennithala, had asked him to meet Pawar and Thackeray.

Earlier on Monday, Raut had said the MVA had reached a consensus on 210 out of 288 assembly seats, while state Congress chief Nana Patole claimed that discussions had been completed on 96 seats.

"(The Ruling) Mahayuti has bigger problems than the MVA," Patole said when reporters asked him about the seat-sharing impasse in the opposition alliance.

As discussions on seat-sharing dragged on among the MVA partners, minor parties within the opposition bloc, including the Samajwadi Party (SP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Left parties, and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP), were growing increasingly restless.