File picture of Maharashtra Congress President Nana Patole
| Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI
The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has constituted leadership committees for Maharashtra and Mumbai to begin negotiations with the Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition counterparts of Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
The seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Assembly election is pending between the three constituents of the Opposition alliance in Maharashtra. The election is likely to be held either in October or November as the Assembly’s term expires on November 26, 2024.
The Maharashtra panel includes the State unit head Nana Patole, Legislature Party Leader Balasaheb Thorat, Leader of Opposition in Assembly Vijay Wadettiwar, former Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, Nitin Raut, Arif Naseem Khan and Satej (Bunty) Patil.
Whereas the Mumbai committee consists of three members — Mumbai Regional Congress Committee chief and newly-elected Member of Parliament Varsha Gaikwad, Ashok (Bhai) Jagtap and MLA Aslam Shaikh.
During the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly election, the bigger parties of the pre-election alliance were Congress and the undivided NCP. The Congress contested on 145 seats with 44 emerging victorious and the NCP had 123 nominees with 54 of them winning their seats. The other parties that supported the larger national-level United Progressive Alliance (UPA) were Samajwadi Party, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, Peasants and Workers Party of India, Bahujan Vikas Aghadi, among others.
Post elections, the undivided Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party parted ways and the former became an ally of Congress–NCP to form Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) coalition. This alliance eventually formed a government in Maharashtra with undivided Shiv Sena’s chief Uddhav Thackeray as the Chief Minister.
