BJP had announced the name of candidates for 125 seats, the Shiv Sena merely released a list of the constituencies
Mumbai: Bharatiya Janata Party announced its first list of candidates, the Shiv Sena has also released its list of 124 seats that it will be contesting the 2019 Maharashtra assembly elections.
While the BJP had announced the name of candidates for 125 seats, the Shiv Sena merely released a list of the constituencies it will be contesting without mentioning candidate names.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, BJP chief Chandrakant Dada Patil and minister Pankaja Munde were among 125 candidates named by BJP on Tuesday in its first list for Maharashtra assembly elections to be held across on October 21. The party also announced the name of Shivaji Maharaj's descendant, Udayanraje Bhosale as its candidate for Satara bypolls.
Though the Shiv Sena has issued 'AB' form (which mentions the official party candidate) to its sitting MLAs as well as to some candidates, no major leader has submitted a nomination so far.
Meanwhile, Shiv Sena also announced a list of 70 candidates today. In a joint statement issued by the BJP and the Shiv Sena on Monday, it was announced that the seat-sharing had been finalized between the alliance partners. The Sena is likely to contest 124 seats and of the remaining 164, the BJP will give a few seats to the smaller allies. Shiv Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray’s son Aaditya has already announced his candidature from the Worli Seat in Mumbai.
The division of the NDA alliance in the 288-seat Maharashtra assembly elections will be 125 seats for BJP, 124 seats for Shiv Sena and the remaining 39 seats for smaller partners like the Republican Party of India. Along with the 124 seats, the Shiv Sena will also get two MLC seats from the BJP quota.
The initial reports suggested that the Sena and the BJP would fight an equal number of seats for the 288-member House and leave a fraction for smaller allies, the seat-sharing talks remained uneasy with no agreement on the formula for long.
In the 2014 Assembly elections, the BJP and the Sena had contested separately over a dispute over sharing of seats. The BJP won a maximum of 122 out of 260 seats it had contested while the Sena bagged 63 out of 282 seats.
After the BJP formed the government in October 2014, the Sena joined it in December the same year.
Maharashtra will go to polls on October 21 and the results will be declared on October 24.
