INDIA bloc
India bloc seat sharing 'settled' in Maharashtra, on right track in UP: Congress
New Delhi/IBNS: Maharashtra's Maha Vikas Aghadi, an alliance of Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray faction with Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, and the Congress, have come to an understanding on the seat sharing issue.
After a meeting this evening, Sena's Sanjay Raut was seen smiling as he emerged from the three-hour-long meeting.
"We are all together and will be united... we have discussed each and every seat," Raut told reporters after the mega meeting to decide on the decision of state's 48 seats.
"We will be the first state to announce seats... The Shiv Sena May have spilt, but the people are with the Uddhav faction and the same with the NCP... We will be together for the elections," senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala, the Congress's Maharashtra in-charge, later told NDTV.
Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid, who attended the meeting for Uttar Pradesh's seat sharing discussion, said things were going in the "right direction". "We are on the same page, I feel we could communicate very well," he added, calling it an "excellent meeting".
Asked if there was a possibility of chemistry developing between the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, he said it was "beyond" his imagination. "We just need to be firm and take it forward," he added.
For the Congress, seat-sharing discussions are not likely to be a cakewalk, given its troubled relationship with other opposition parties including the Samajwadi Party, Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party and the Trinamool Congress.
In Bengal, Congress wants five seats while Trinamool Congress supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has made it clear that she is not ready to offer any. The matter has not been officially discussed yet.
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