The seat sharing deal in Maharashtra for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024 has been finalised by the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance, NDTV quoted sources as saying. However, the official announcement is likely in 48 hours.

“As far as the seat sharing is concerned, the shiv sena faction led by ex-Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is all set to contest the upcoming  polls on 20 seats, while the congress will contest on 18 and the Nationalist Congress Party unit led by Sharad Pawar will fight on remaining 10 seats in the state,” they said.

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Furthermore, the regional parties including  Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi will get two seats form the Thackrey led-Shiv Sena (UBT) and an independent candidate Raju Shetty will be facilitated with a ticket form the Pawar led-NCP faction, said sources.

They also indicated that the Sena (UBT) have expressed their willingness to contest four out of the total six seats in Mumbai, from which one will be possibly handed over to the VBA. That seat could be Mumbai North East seat.

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The major issue in coalition, which the INDIA alliance, spearheaded by the grand old party and established in June last year with the explicit goal of challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), faced is that the regional and state level parties have been constantly pressuring the national parties to give a more substantial share of seats in each negotiation.

For instance, Congress’ lackluster electoral performance over the past decade, notably in 2014 and 2019, where it collectively won fewer than 100 seats, has added complexity. The alliance faced a near-breaking point in Uttar Pradesh due to the assertiveness of Akhilesh Yadav led-Samajwadi Party.

If we talk about Bengal, then Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) went a step further, severing all talks with the Congress after continuous negotiations around her ‘final’ offer of two seats—equivalent to what it secured in the previous election.

Meanwhile, there have been several positive development for Congress such as it came to a successful seat sharing agreement in Uttar Pradesh with the Samajwadi Party for a 17:63 split out of the total 80 seats in the state. Additionally, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party successfully closed a pan-India accord.