New Delhi:

The ruling alliance in Maharashtra has almost completed the knotty exercise of seat sharing, various leaders indicated off the record today. Sources in the BJP said the party will contest on 158 of the state’s 288 seats. It has offered 70 seats to Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and 50 to Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.

The alliance has also decided not to project a face for the Chief Minister post and Eknath Shinde is expected to remain its face in the run-up to the election, sources said after the Congress and the BJP held parallel strategy meets. 

The BJP’s Maharashtra core group meet in Delhi was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party chief J P Nadda. 

Maharashtra BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the party’s national general secretary Vinod Tawde were among those present. 

The blueprint settles the challenges the Mahayuti was facing – the high demands from alliance partners and the BJP’s internal resistance to allotting seats to Ajit Pawar’s faction of the NCP. The Shiv Sena was asking for 90 seats and the NCP 70. 

The Opposition alliance Maha Vikas Aghadi, meanwhile, is still at work trying to establish its broad roadmap. The parties are yet to sort out the tussle over some of the seats, including state capital Mumbai and Nagpur. 

The Congress, which also held a strategy meet earlier this evening, announced that the decision on the Chief Minister in Maharashtra will be taken after the elections – a situation that the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena is deeply uncomfortable with. 

Mr Thackeray has repeatedly said an announcement about the Chief Ministerial candidate, whoever it is, should be made as early as possible. He, however, has maintained that the Opposition will wait till the ruling alliance shows its cards. 

At the Congress meet, held in Delhi under the chairmanship of Mallikarjun Kharge, the leaders were advised to avoid overconfidence like in Haryana.

The state leaders, who included Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole and Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala, were advised to speak with caution on sensitive issues including Other Backward Classes and Maratha reservation. Over-dependence on Jats, and short shrift to the OBCs had cost the Congress heavily in Haryana. 

In Maharashtra too, the BJP strategy includes consolidation of the OBC votes with various other communities to take on the MVA alliance of Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar and the Congress. The ruling alliance is also hopeful of winning a chunk of the Maratha vote. 

The November-December election in Maharashtra is one from which the Opposition has high hopes, having bested the ruling alliance in the Lok Sabha election earlier this year. The results, they claimed, has decisively settled the question of which is the real Shiv Sena and the real NCP, even though the Election Commission had awarded the party names and election symbols to the rebel factions in both cases. 

The outcome was dismal for the ruling alliance, with the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi -the alliance of Congress, Uddhav Thackeray faction of Shiv Sena and the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP – winning 30 of the state’s 48 Lok Sabha seats. The ruling alliance won 17. One seat went to an Independent candidate.

Election dates for Jharkhand and Maharashtra are likely to be announced soon.