Seat-sharing settled, minister says no 'big brother' in BJP-Sena alliance

With the seat-sharing issue settled between the Shiv Sena and the BJP, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday that there was no "big brother" in the Mahayuthi alliance and that the two parties will get over 200 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly in the October 21 polls.

The minister put the onus on the media for the "big brother" tag in the BJP-Sena combine and underlined that no one in the alliance declared so.

On Friday, addressing a joint press conference with Devendra Fadnavis, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said who was the "elder brother" in the alliance was not an issue.

Of the 288 assembly seats, the Shiv Sena will contest 124, smaller NDA allies such as RPI and RSP will contest 14, and remaining seats (150) will be contested by the BJP, Fadnavis said.

The Sena is also expected to get two berths in the Legislative Council from the BJP quota.

"The alliance will post an unprecedented victory," Fadnavis said.

Taking a dig at the Congress, Javadekar said the BJP is a party which works 24/7 and the moment 2019 elections ended, it started preparing for the next election.

"The Congress party could not find a replacement of its president for two months. Within those two months we had new working president in place, we launched our new massive membership drive and added eight crore members, making it a 19 crore-member party. It is huge," he said.

"So, we are working on the ground and our forte is booth. We remain among the people 24/7 for which people reward us," he said.

Javadekar also expressed confidence that the two parties together will comfortably get a majority in the Maharashtra Assembly polls.

"We are fighting as an alliance and the alliance will get more than 200 seats. We are very confident," he said.

The Sena and BJP had contested the 2014 state polls separately. The counting of votes in Maharashtra will take place on October 24.

(Inputs from Hindustan Times)