Reportedly nearly week after announcing their alliance for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly election, Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party revealed the seat-sharing formula Friday, the last date to file nominations. Meanwhile the uddhav thackeray led Shiv Sena will field candidates in 126 seats, the BJP and other allies would contest on 162 seats as per the seat sharing agreement.
Furthermore the saffron ideologies of both the parties brought them close, with the Yuti, another name for the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance, having been forged as early as 1989. Earlier in the 1990 state Assembly polls, the Sena-BJP alliance got 94 seats in all, emerging for the first time as a major opposition party in the state.
Reportedly as their partnership completes three decades, the two parties have reversed the decision they took for the 2014 Assembly polls of not going together something they did for the first time since 1989 with the BJP overlooking stinging editorials in the Sena mouthpiece Saamna criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union minister amit shah and the party. Moreover this year, the absence of a solid Opposition front improves the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance’s chances to return to power with a considerable margin.
