Mumbai Mahavikas Aghadi comprising Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT and Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SCP has made a fresh distribution of seats for the Maharashtra Assembly elections. Mahavikas Aghadi has kept 90-90 seats for all three parties. Earlier Mahavikas Aghadi had divided 85-85 seats. Now after the fresh distribution of seats between the parties of Congress, Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar, 18 seats are left for other parties. Out of these 18 seats, seats will be given to Samajwadi Party and Left parties and others. There are 288 seats in Maharashtra Assembly.
If we look at the distribution of seats in Mahavikas Aghadi this time, Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SCP are going to contest on much less seats than last time. In such a situation, all three will have to show unity and transfer votes on each other’s seats. If Congress, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-UBT and Sharad Pawar’s NCP fail to transfer votes to each other, then there could be a big hurdle in the path of gaining power. If such a hurdle arises, then the survival of Mahavikas Aghadi will also be questioned. The same happened in UP, when after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance of Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav broke on allegations of non-transfer of votes.
The special thing is that when Uddhav Thackeray was with BJP with undivided Shiv Sena, he was given 126 seats in 2019. Out of which Shiv Sena had won 56 seats. At the same time, Congress had fielded candidates on 147 seats in the last Maharashtra Assembly elections and won 44 seats. Sharad Pawar’s NCP also did not fall prey to division during the last Maharashtra Assembly elections. Then NCP had contested elections on 121 seats and its candidates were victorious on 54 seats. Whereas, Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had fielded candidates on 101 seats of Maharashtra Assembly and won 1 seat. At the same time, CPM had won 1 seat by contesting on 8 seats. 2 MLAs from Samajwadi Party were elected.
