Despite LS debacle, BJP to fight Assembly polls in alliance with Shinde, Ajit
Mumbai: After the poor show in the Lok Sabha election, Maharashtra BJP will decide its road map for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly election on Friday. The party has called a meeting of its core committee at the party headquarter in Mumbai. The core committee will also decide the names for candidates of biennial election for 11 seats of the Maharashtra Legislative Council.
The sources said that the party would contest on five legislative council seats, while its alliance partners Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar led NCP would contest two seats each.
BJP president J.P. Nadda and Union home minister Amit Shah on Tuesday had chaired a meeting in New Delhi with Maharashtra leaders including Devendra Fadnavis, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Chandrashekhar Bawankule among others over the deliberation on the causes of the drubbing in Lok Sabha election.
A Maharashtra BJP leader, who attended the meeting in New Delhi, told this newspaper that they have apprised the Central leaders about reasons behind poor performance in the Lok Sabha election. One of the reasons was the consolidation of scheduled tribes (ST), scheduled castes (SC) and Muslim votes against the BJP-led Mahayuti.
The central leadership has asked the state core committee to chalk out a plan for the Assembly election. “We are going to hold a meeting on Friday evening to discuss the strategy for the Assembly election. We will have to focus on our core voters, who are loyal to the party from its inception. We have to pacify our core voters. For this, we will have to accommodate the candidates from the open category in the biennial election of the Council,” the BJP leader said.
He also said that the party would contest the upcoming Assembly election in the alliance with Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led NCP. “We are not in position to leave our partners so we may have to contest the Assembly election as the Mahayuti,” he said.
A leader from the Mahayuti said that each constituent has been asked to focus on its core voters. NCP has secular votes, so Ajit Pawar’s party is likely to field Muslim and Dalit candidates in the council election in the backdrop of upcoming Maharashtra Assembly election.
“We are planning to field sitting MLC Baba Jani Durrani and Siddharth Kamble. Both of them belong to our core voter groups, which have turned their back to the MVA in the Lok Sabha election. We are now pacifying them by giving representation to the Council,” an NCP leader said.
