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MUMBAI: Maha Vikas Aghadi comprising NCP (SP), Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress has summoned all its winning candidates to Mumbai immediately after the poll results are declared on Saturday.
It is not fear of poaching that has driven this decision but the idea that all legislators of the alliance should be under one roof, MVA sources said, adding that their alliance was confident of securing a clear majority.
“Senior MVA functionaries met on Friday to discuss the political situation and decided to call all the newly-elected legislators to the city on Saturday itself. We will discuss govt formation,” former minister and UBT Sena politician Anil Parab said. The meeting was attended by Parab, UBT Sena MPs Sanjay Raut and Anil Desai, and Congress’ Balasaheb Thorat.
Raut said Sena (UBT) had made ‘arrangements’ in Mumbai for their MLAs from rural parts of the state to stay. “Old MLAs have some arrangements but new ones may not,” he said.
Sharad Pawar claimed on Friday that MVA would secure 157 seats, while Uddhav Thackeray put the number at 160. MPCC president Nana Patole was confident of 150 to 155 seats. Sources in Congress said an internal survey revealed that MVA would win 158 seats, while Mahayuti would get 113. The survey stated that BJP would emerge as the single-largest party with 67 seats.
AICC general secretary Ramesh Chennithala rejected reports that MVA would want to shift its legislators to neighbouring states. “Our legislators have remained loyal even during the worst crises, so there is no need to shift them out of Maharashtra,” he said.
Parab said specific instructions had been given to all MVA candidates that they should be alert during counting of votes and if any untoward incident took place, it should be brought to the notice of the returning officer immediately; if there was no response, the matter should be escalated.
Chennithala said he was confident MVA would form the govt “with a clear majority” and that there was no dispute over the CM’s post. The decision on the CM would be taken after consulting all senior MVA functionaries and the AICC brass, he said.
Incidentally, in the past five years, the state has seen two rounds of hotel and resort politics – once in 2019 when Shiv Sena walked out of the alliance with BJP and formed MVA, and then in 2022, when Eknath Shinde rebelled against Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership with 40 MLAs. While in 2019, several MLAs from NCP had flown to Surat and then returned to form the MVA govt, in 2022, Sena MLAs backing Shinde first went to Surat, then Guwahati and then to Goa, from where they returned after Shinde took oath as CM.
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