Mahayuti, MVA lines blur for local body elections

Mumbai: Political parties, desperate to win the local body polls, are willing to forego political rivalries and ideologies and are forging alliances which could blur the lines between the ruling Mahayuti alliance and Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance. NCP (SP) president Sharad Pawar, who had distanced himself from his nephew Ajit Pawar after he split the NCP to join a government with the BJP, has now indicated that he would be okay to join hands with Ajit Pawar for an alliance at the local level.

The two factions are talking to have an alliance for the Pimpri Chinchwad municipal council polls. The offer for an alliance to take on the BJP was given by the Sharad Pawar camp to Ajit Pawar camp who is seriously considering it. Similarly, in the Chandgad Nagar panchayat and zilla parishad polls in Kolhapur, the two NCPs are coming together to keep the BJP at bay.

For the 15 municipal council and nagar panchayat polls in Nagpur, the Shiv Sena (Shinde) is keen on having an alliance with the BJP and has threatened that if the latter does not allocate it seats, then it would have an alliance of the NCP and other smaller parties to take on the BJP.


While all these political alliances are happening with the blessings of the party leadership, there are few where the party leadership has stepped in to stop such alliances. For instance, for the Kankavli local body polls, the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray Sena had tried to form an alliance to take on the BJP. However, when Uddhav Thackeray came to know of the proposal, he pulled up the local leaders of Kankavli for even daring to bring up such a proposal saying that there could be no truck with Shinde's Shiv Sena.