Palghar bypolls: Not an alliance between BJP and MNS, but seat adjustment, say Union min
Both parties will fight the Palghar district council (zilla parishad) and panchayat samiti bypolls on 29 seats together. The BJP will contest 20 seats, while the MNS will contest the remaining nine seats
For the first time, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to have “seat adjustment” for elections with Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) for the local body polls at Palghar. Both parties will fight the Palghar district council (zilla parishad) and panchayat samiti bypolls on 29 seats together.
The BJP will contest 20 seats, while the MNS will contest the remaining nine seats. The BJP may even offer some seats to local outfits from its quota.
Both asserted that it was just an adjustment and not an alliance per se. They said both parties will fight in those seats where they are strong and avoid fights against each other.
Union minister and BJP member of Parliament (MP) Kapil Patil who is the architect of this tie-up said, “It is not an alliance between the BJP and MNS, but seat adjustment. We will fight on those seats where we are strong and they will not field their candidates and vice versa,” said Patil. He said the adjustment was being done for the sake of the development of Palghar.
MNS leader Avinash Jadhav said the adjustments were based on local factors. “The local conditions are such that if we both (BJP and MNS) stay together, we will win power and hence we took this decision,” said Jadhav.
After the Shiv Sena snapped ties with the BJP in October 2019 to form the government in Maharashtra with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress, the saffron party is considering an alliance or a tacit tie-up with the MNS as a strategic move to counter three-party coalition, especially the Shiv Sena.
BJP chief Chandrakant Patil called on Raj Thackeray at the latter’s residence in Dadar last month, fuelling speculations over a BJP tie-up. The MNS enjoys sizable pockets in cities like Mumbai, Nashik, Kalyan-Dombivli and could help the BJP in garnering votes of Marathi speaking population and denting the vote bank of friend-turned-foe Sena, which effectively plays the Marathi manoos card to get votes of Maharashtrians in metropolitan areas of the state. However, the BJP is wary of the anti-North Indian plank of the MNS which could hurt its North Indian vote bank.
This month, the state Election Commission (SEC) announced bypolls for six zilla parishads (district councils) — Palghar, Dhule, Nandurbar, Akola, Washim, and Nagpur — and 33 other panchayat samitis on the seats vacated following the Supreme Court (SC) order against the political reservation for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) community. The polls will be held on October 5 and the counting will be held the next day.
Meanwhile, MNS chief Raj Thackeray is on a Pune tour to meet his party workers in preparation for the Pune civic polls. The Pune MNS unit has been strongly advocating a tie-up with the BJP. Thackeray, in his speech, asked his party leaders to prepare for solo fight now and not depend on an alliance.