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Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, January 14
Senior BJP leaders in Maharashtra, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, are making a last-ditch effort to stitch up an alliance with the Shiv Sena for the Lok Sabha elections ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Mumbai later this month.
Modi is visiting Mumbai on January 23 to lay the foundation stone for the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway.
Sources in the BJP say Fadnavis and other senior leaders in the state BJP want Modi and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray to share the dais at the foundation stone laying ceremony. The appearance of the two leaders coming together in public would indicate that they were burying the hatchet ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, sources in the BJP felt.
BJP is also considering naming the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway after Bal Thackeray as a sop to the Shiv Sena, according to reports.
Mediators of the two parties have held several meetings but have failed to reach common ground, sources in both the Shiv Sena and the BJP say.
Nationalist Congress Party chief Jayant Patil even went on to claim that Fadnavis and Thackeray had a midnight meeting at a Mumbai hotel earlier this month. Though neither the BJP nor the Shiv Sena have commented on the matter, several Shiv Sena leaders have ratcheted up their demands via the media.
Among the demands include the post of Chief Minister for the Shiv Sena should the alliance emerge victorious in the assembly elections due in October 2019 irrespective of which of the two win the maximum number of seats.
A section of the Shiv Sena is also demanding that both parties carve up the 48 Lok Sabha seats equally like it did in Bihar.
On the other hand, Thackeray and Shiv Sena mouthpiece 'Saamna' continues with its attack on the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Senior Shiv Sena leader and Maharashtra's Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam even went on to say that Shiv Sainiks "would bury the BJP".
Meanwhile, both Thackeray and Shah have asked their respective party leaders to prepare for contesting all the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. "Please do no feel dejected if there is no alliance in Maharashtra. Be prepared to fight and win all the Lok Sabha seats," Shah said at a party convention last week.