War of words on seat-sharing: Congress faces humiliation as allies spar over LS Polls allocation
seat-sharing talks for the Lok Sabha polls in Maharashtra are already showing the fault lines between one key ally and one prospective ally of the Congress humiliating the grand old party leadership in the state.
While Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi's Prakash Ambedkar described the state Congress leaders as «donkeys», the Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) faction of Shiv Sena had on Friday said that the state Congress leadership did not matter.
«Those who are speaking (in the state Congress) do not have any powers.
We are speaking to the Congress leadership in New Delhi and not them (state leadership),» said Sanjay Raut on Friday while speaking to reporters. He was referring to the state Congress chief Nana Patole's remarks who was responding to Raut's earlier comments that the UBT will contest Lok Sabha polls on 23 seats.
«The seat-sharing has to be on merit,» Patole had said. The merit argument is being used by the Congress to argue that while the UBT had won 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the party is now split and there are already 13 MPs, including Rajya Sabha MPs who have joined the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction).
So, the UBT faction cannot seek to contest 18 seats and all the seats won by the Shiv Sena will be under negotiation. Raut slammed Patole's merit argument saying, «Who is he? Does he have a power of attorney (from the central leadership).? He is a state leader, we are not talking to the state leadership, we are speaking to the Delhi leadership,» said Raut.
The UBT leader said that since Congress won just 1 seat in 2019, the discussions would start from «zero.» Basically, the UBT wants Congress to accept a formula where the former contests 23 seats that it has always been contesting and the Congress contests
