After the Shiv Sena accused the BJP of deliberating escalating the
seat-sharing controversy in order to break the 25-year-old alliance, the
BJP on Friday said it will send a fresh proposal to the Uddhav
Thackeray-led party.
The BJP, however, remained firm on its
demand to contest half of the 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly
elections next month, saying the Shiv Sena had not won many of the seats
it contests for years.
"We will send a proposal to Sena on the
number of seats we want to contest. There are 59 seats where Sena didn't
win in the last 25 years and 19 where BJP didn't win. We want Sena to
consider this fact. We want discussion on each seat," former state BJP
president Sudhir Mungantiwar said after the Maharashtra BJP's core
committee met in Pune.
"We have been hearing from the media that
Sena has offered us the same 119 seats we contested in 2009 polls. We
will not commit such a mistake of adopting a via media to convey our
proposal and send it directly to Sena," he said.
The BJP leader, however, made it clear that there would be no rapprochement at the cost of "self-respect" and "pride".
"We
want the alliance to continue. But it should not be at the cost of
self-respect. We want a resolution while keeping intact our pride,"
Mungantiwar said.
The Shiv Sena was given a 24-hour deadline by
the BJP on Thursday to respond to its demand of contesting an equal
number of seats. The BJP had proposed, after its landslide victory in
Lok Sabha polls, that both parties should contest 135 seats each and
leave the remaining 18 seats for the junior partners in the alliance.
The
Sena said it remains adamant on its demand to contest 155 seats in the
288-member Maharashtra Assembly and offered 119 seats to the BJP, which
it was asked to share with the other partners parties in the Mahayuti, a
rainbow alliance including smaller parties like RPI(A) and Swabhimani
Shetkari Sanghatana.
The BJP, which had earlier threatened to go alone, is convinced that the Narendra Modi
wave, which helped the alliance sweep the state in the Lok Sabha
elections in May, will help the party again in the October 15 polls.
In the 2009 elections, Sena contested 169 seats and the BJP 119.
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