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Home Minister Amit Shah held discussions for seat sharing in Maharashtra for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections with coalition partners Shiv Sena chief Eknath Shinde and Nationalist Congress Party president Ajit Pawar.
According to PTI, Shinde and Pawar — chief minister and deputy chief minister of Maharashtra — held talks with Shah in New Delhi late on Friday. Senior BJP leader and Maharashtra deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was also present in the meeting.
Shinde-led Shiv Sena, Pawar-led NCP and the BJP will contest the Lok Sabha elections in alliance in Maharashtra which sends 48 members to the lower house of Parliament.
The BJP had won 23 of the 25 seats it had contested in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, while its then alliance partner — undivided Shiv Sena — won 18 seats of the 23 seats it had contested.
The undivided NCP, as part of the opposition alliance, had contested 19 seats and managed to win four.
The Shiv Sena, which had joined hands with the Congress and the NCP to form a coalition government after the assembly elections in Maharashtra in 2019, split in 2022 when Eknath Shinde walked away with a majority of the party’s MPs and MLAs and joined hands with the BJP.
The BJP, which was the single largest party after the last state elections, formed a coalition government with Shinde as the chief minister.
Similarly, Ajit Pawar walked away with a majority of the MLAs and joined the BJP-Shiv Sena government last year.
The Shinde and the Ajit Pawar factions have been recognised as the ‘real’ Shiv Sena and the ‘real’ NCP’ by the Election Commission and the Maharashtra assembly Speaker.
The BJP is keen to contest more than 30 seats in the upcoming elections.
