Uddhav Thackeray Eyes 20 LS Seats But MVA Yet To Take Its Call

Chief of the Shiv Sena (UBT), Uddhav Thackeray, named coordinators on Monday for eighteen of Maharashtra’s forty-eight Lok Sabha seats; however, the four parties in the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) have not yet agreed on a seat-sharing arrangement.

This is the initial list of coordinators, according to Vinayak Raut, a Thackeray faction MP, and four to five additional appointments are anticipated in the next few days as the party plans to field candidates for more than 20 seats.

The party will compete in Mumbai for the four seats of North West, North East, South Central, and South Mumbai. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the Shiv Sena, in its entirety, ran for and won three of the city’s six Lok Sabha seats. However, the Thackeray faction has now taken over Mumbai North East, a seat that was formerly held by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

Of the three MPs, Mumbai South’s Arvind Sawant is still with Thackeray, while Mumbai North West’s Gajanan Kirtikar and Mumbai South Central’s Rahul Shewale have joined the Shiv Sena, led by chief minister Eknath Shinde.

The name of Kalyan’s seat was missing from the list. The Kalyan Lok Sabha constituency is currently being manned by CM Eknath Shinde’s son, but in the 2019 election, the party won the seat.

A Shiv Sena (UBT) leader on condition of anonymity said, “The name of Hatkangale is also not on the list and the party is likely to leave that seat to farmer leader Raju Shetti.”

The Sena (UBT), Congress, Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP, and Prakash Ambedkar’s Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi are among the leaders of the MVA. They have been holding seat-sharing negotiations for almost a month, but they have not yet come to an agreement.