DURING THE CONGRESS’S ongoing Jan Sangharsh Yatra in Maharashtra, party leader and former minister Vasant Purke flayed Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “If we come to power, we will imprison Modi,” Purke said at a rally in the Vidarbha region. He was not the only one to go hammer and tongs at Modi; almost all Congress leaders at the rally gave aggressive speeches criticising the BJP rule at the Centre and in the state.
The Congress victories in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan assembly elections have given the party hope that it could win a majority of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra. That is why party leaders took the initiative to stitch up an alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party, which had parted ways with the Congress before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The Congress could win just two seats in 2014, while the NCP won only four. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance swept the rest of the seats.
That the Congress had learnt its lesson became clear when state party president Ashok Chavan took the initiative to arrange a meeting between Congress president Rahul Gandhi and firebrand farmer leader Raju Shetti. A former constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, Shetti had turned a bitter critic of the Modi government and its agricultural policies. At the meeting, it was decided that the Congress and Shetti’s Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana would work together on issues concerning farmers.
The Congress and the NCP later announced their decision to contest the polls together. Senior leaders of both the parties have held a series of seat-sharing talks. “We have reached an agreement on 40 of 48 seats. A decision regarding the remaining eight seats is yet to be taken,” said senior Congress leader and former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.
According to a Congress leader, the NCP wants an equal number of seats, but the Congress is keen on contesting 26 seats. “They are not accepting it right now, but we are confident that they eventually will,” said the leader.
The NCP’s rationale behind staking claim for 24 seats is that they had won more seats than the Congress in 2014. Both the Congress and the NCP have staked claim for Pune, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Nandurbar, Raver, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Buldhana and Yavatmal Lok Sabha seats.
Pune has long been contested by the Congress, but the NCP is claiming the seat on the basis of its dominance in Pune Municipal Corporation. “The NCP says it has 35 corporators in the municipal corporation, whereas the Congress has only nine, and so the seat should be given to the NCP. But this argument is not sound. Of the 35, only 11 have their wards in Pune parliamentary seat. So, if we take the constituency-wise position, the NCP has just two more corporators than we do,” said Anant Gadgil, legislator and son of former Union minister V.N. Gadgil.
At least five Congress leaders, including Gadgil, are in the fray for the party ticket from Pune. Businessman-turned-politician Sanjay Kakade, an independent Rajya Sabha member who now supports the BJP, has made it clear that he will join any party that will field him in Pune. “Five of us who are keen to contest from Pune have written to the state Congress leadership that they can give the ticket to anyone among us, but not to an outsider,” said Gadgil.
Observers say the NCP is likely to give up its claim for Pune, Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg, Nandurbar, Aurangabad and Yavatmal. Raver, Buldhana and Ahmednagar are the seats that the NCP really wants to retain. The party had contested all three seats in 2014.
The NCP, however, is on a sticky wicket in Ahmednagar. In 2014, the party had fielded former MLA Rajeev Rajale, who lost to the BJP’s Dilip Gandhi. Rajale’s wife, Monika, later joined the BJP and was elected to the assembly. Rajale himself died in 2017.
Recently, NCP corporators in Ahmednagar Municipal Corporation embarrassed the party leadership by supporting the BJP’s mayoral candidate. The Congress, which always wanted to wrest Ahmednagar from the NCP, now wants to field Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of party veteran and opposition leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, there. Sujay is learnt to have informed the Congress that he would not hesitate to join the BJP if he does not get the party ticket. For its part, the NCP is learnt to have asked for Nandurbar and Aurangabad in return for Ahmednagar.
The seat-sharing for the Mumbai region has been finalised. The NCP will get Mumbai North East, while the remaining five seats will be contested by the Congress. Among the five, there is unanimity on the candidate in only one seat—Mumbai South, which will be contested by former Union minister Milind Deora.
Nawab Malik, the NCP’s chief spokesperson, said the seat-sharing talks were progressing well. “We will announce the numbers only after taking smaller parties like the CPI(M), the Samajwadi Party, the Peasants and Workers Party and Prakash Ambedkar’s Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh into our confidence,” he told THE WEEK. “Their approval also matters because the CPI(M) has been claiming the Dindori constituency, as it has a strong base there. Similarly, Raju Shetti will have to be accommodated from our quota. So it is necessary for us to get all of them on board. Only then the final seat-sharing formula can be declared.”