Cong-NCP firms up pact with Mayawati for Maharashtra

New Delhi: The Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress have firmed up a broad-based coalition to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Maharashtra which includes the Bahujan Samaj Party, the CPI(M), erstwhile NDA ally Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna led by Raju Shetty, and many other smaller parties like the Sharad Yadav-backed Loktantrik Janata Dal.

After Karnataka, this is the first pre-poll state-level alliance to which the Bahujan Samaj Party has agreed to join “in-principle”. Before the alliance with the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, Ms Mayawati had always been uninterested in allying with any party. In fact, she had earlier refused a tieup with the NCP despite being approached.

Talks on seat-sharing between these parties have been worked out after a series of meetings between the NCP, the BSP and the Congress, the most recent one being that between NCP chief Sharad Pawar and BSP supremo Mayawati earlier this week, NCP sources said.

Senior Congress leader from Maharashtra and MPCC vice-president Sanjay Nirupam told this newspaper that the Congress had in-principle agreed to form such a coalition of “like-minded” parties to take on the BJP, but no details have been worked our as far as seat-sharing was concerned with any party.

“Any such decision would be taken after talks between leaders at the national level,” he said, adding that several smaller parties with pockets of influence in the state will also be accommodated.

The BSP has several such pockets of influence in Maharashtra, especially in Vidarbha.

Besides the BSP, talks have also been held with other parties like the CPI(M), which has been promised three Assembly seats — Solapur, Dahanu and Sangener. The party has, however, been told that it cannot be given a Lok Sabha seat as Swabh-imani Shetkari Sanghatna chief Raju Shetty, who was earlier with the NDA, had to be accommodated in the Opposition.

Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats and the NCP-Congress alliance had earlier won only six seats. Assembly polls are due in Maharashtra in October 2019, and so there is a high possibility that the polls to both the Lok Sabha and the Assembly could be held together.

Incidentally, the BSP and the Congress have been unable to come to an understanding on seat-sharing in the three crucial poll-bound states of MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. It is understood that the Congress was interested in forming and alliance only in MP, but the BSP wanted the alliance to extend to the two other states as well.

However, the Congress has now deputed senior leader Digvijay Singh to try bring the BSP on board in Madhya Pradesh, top party sources said.