Indisciplined Chaos Marks Seat Sharing Process In Maharashtra

A fluid situation ensues in Maharashtra’s Lok Sabha 2024 polls with disruption and chaos marking the seat-sharing scenario even within the ruling Mahayuti alliance led by the BJP known for its disciplined, well-oiled election machinery. The BJP, which had successfully split both the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, is now scrambling to even finalise candidates, quell internal rebellion with just a month to go for the polls. The prestigious South Mumbai constituency is the most prominent case in point. Initially this richie-rich constituency was almost granted to state legislative assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar, and he had even started campaigning. Soon afterwards though, the seat got tossed around to contenders like Milind Deora, who has already been nominated to the Rajya Sabha and even to Bala Nandgaonkar from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Negotiations with Raj Thackeray and BJP moved from talks of getting him to merge his party with the BJP (he refused), to offering him three LS seats including Mumbai South and finally ended up with the MNS refusing to put up any candidates in this LS election. It was only after Raj Thackeray’s much-hyped Delhi trip visit to meet Amit Shah, that realization seems to have dawned on BJP that the MNS’s north-Indian agitation won’t go down with its voters in the North. There is also still no clarity on whether the BJP plans to retain or clip the wings of Poonam Mahajan, its Mumbai North Central candidate nor is there clarity on the Mumbai North West seat which is being reportedly being eyed by the likes of Govinda, Swara Bhaskar and even Raj Babbar.