September 17, 2026 05:56 pm (IST)
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BJP, Shiv Sena to fight Maha polls alone, alliance comes to end
Mumbai, Sept 25 (IBNS): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena on Thursday decided to contest the Maharashtra Assembly elections alone breaking the grand and 25-year-old 'Mahayuti' alliance.
Announcing the decision at a press conference, BJP leader Eknath Khadse said that his party made all efforts possible to continue the alliance but it could not accept the options that were offered by Shiv Sena.
He also said that the two parties were stuck in a deadlock over the number of seats.
"They were adamant on their seat-sharing proposal. We conveyed it to the Shiv Sena that bringing down the Congress-NCP alliance is the priority but they were more interested in the Chief Minister's post," Khadse said.
BJP sources said the Sena had refused to give an inch more than what they had offered to them in a new proposal and four smaller parties who are also a part of the alliance.
They refused to go below 151 seats out of the total 288 Assembly segments in the state, leaving 127 for the BJP.
Earlier, the Sena had proposed 151 seats for itself and 130 for the BJP.
The tug-of-war between the two allies was going on for few weeks with each party demanding a formidable portion of seats to contest and the other quashing it.
The last date of filing nomination is Sept 27.
The cancellation of BJP President Amit Shah’s visit to Mumbai for the second straight day came as an early sign of the political break-up.
Shah’s proposed visit was expected to resolve the seat-sharing imbroglio between the two partners ahead of the crucial Maharashtra Assembly elections scheduled on October 15.
Being one of the oldest political alliance, the two parties formed an alliance after talks between late Bal Thackeray and late Pramod Mahajan in 1989.
The alliance emerged victorious in the 1995 Assembly elections in Maharshtra and formed the government.
In 2014, the BJP-Sena alliance won 41 seats out of total 48 in the Lok Sabha elections.
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