MVA parties seal deal for 125 Maharashtra seats for upcoming Assembly polls; Mahayuti bickers

Maha Vikas Aghadi parties on Thursday sealed an agreement for 125 out of 288 Maharashtra assembly seats. Congress' Vijay Wadettiwar said: "We have reached a decision on 125 seats; the rest would be finalised after Ganesh utsav when the three parties would again sit together and finalise the alliance," he said.

However, the ruling Mahayuti bloc is struggling to find a seat-sharing formula. While BJP wants close to 150 seats, Shiv Sena wants nearly 90 seats and NCP 70 plus seats. BJP leaders said they are now aiming to ensure that at least 100 seats are cleared between the allies within 15 days.

"One of the big issues we faced during Lok Sabha polls was that the seat-sharing squabble went on for too long. We declared candidates 20 days before the voting and it impacted our performance. This time we are trying to avoid it," said a Shiv Sena leader.


A BJP leader, however, said that he feared that the Lok Sabha example would again be repeated in the assembly polls. "Uncertainty among candidates will have bearing on the assembly results," said the BJP leader.