Mumbai: A day after the Congress trumped the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Karnataka state polls, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) parties in Maharashtra went into a huddle Sunday and decided to improve their coordination on the ground with the aim of delivering the same verdict in the elections scheduled to be held in its home state next year.
The MVA is a coalition of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and the Congress, and leaders of the three parties met at NCP president Sharad Pawar’s Mumbai residence, Silver Oak, and addressed a joint press conference post the meeting to reiterate the MVA’s commitment to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections together and work out a seat sharing formula soon.
“In today’s meeting, we dissected the reasons why the BJP lost by such a wide margin in Karnataka. We discussed in great detail the reasons why the winning Congress candidates were successful. The corruption there, the misuse of different agencies…people’s expectations there, was evident from the results,” NCP state president Jayant Patil, who attended the meeting, said at the press conference.
Patil, who addressed the meet jointly with state Congress president Nana Patole and Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, also said, “We will contest the coming Lok Sabha and state assembly polls unitedly. Gradually, we will also start discussions on seat sharing among all three parties.”
“We will also include parties which supported the MVA in forming the government in 2019 in these discussions. The attempt is to improve coordination within the MVA and present a strong alternative before Maharashtra’s people,” he added.
Sunday’s meeting was attended by leaders such as NCP’s Sharad Pawar, Ajit Pawar, Supriya Sule and Jayant Patil; Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray and Raut; and Congress’s Patole, Ashok Chavan and Balasaheb Thorat.
The Congress won 135 of the 224 seats in Karnataka assembly, while the incumbent BJP managed to secure only 66 seats.
Also read: Congress makes inroads in most Karnataka divisions, eats into BJP, JD(S) votes
Joint rallies
In Sunday’s meeting, the three parties decided to resume holding joint rallies of the MVA depending on the severity of the heat and monsoon conditions, all three leaders who addressed the press briefing said.
The MVA started a series of such rallies in April, holding one each in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad), Nagpur, and Mumbai. The rallies were suspended in the first week of May after NCP chief Pawar decided to retire as party chief, only to take his resignation back after widespread protests in the party. Officially, MVA leaders said they were putting their joint rallies on hold due to the soaring summer temperatures.
Congress’s Patole said the MVA has decided to hold a “grand rally” in Pune where the three parties will felicitate the newly-appointed Congress CM of Karnataka who will have taken oath by then.
“Through the CM, we will try to tell the people of Maharashtra why the people of Karnataka were so angry with the BJP,” Patole said.
Patole as well as Raut insisted that there are no differences within the MVA, and any stories of rifts are “media plants by the BJP to deflect attention from real issues”.
‘SC verdict in Thackeray’s favour’
Patole, Patil and Raut also said that the MVA leaders who attended Sunday’s meeting discussed last week’s Supreme Court verdict on the disqualification petition against 16 MLAs from the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and how the judgment points to a victory for the Shiv Sena (UBT).
Last week, the Supreme Court directed the Speaker of the state legislative assembly to take a call on the disqualification plea while clarifying that the whip is that of the political party and not the legislative party. Speaker Rahul Narvekar, a BJP MLA, was directed by the court to decide on the disqualification plea after ascertaining whether the political party is with the Shinde-led faction or the Thackeray-led faction.
Patole said, “If one tries to understand the Supreme Court verdict, it is in favour of Uddhav Thackeray…In democracy, there is no importance given to defectors and no one is bigger than the party. The life (of the Shinde government) has been saved for a few days. It is on oxygen.”
Raut said the BJP is “misinterpreting” the Supreme Court’s verdict and the MVA will go to the district level to spread awareness on how the verdict is in favour of Uddhav Thackeray.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
Also read: Karnataka election 2023 — eight lessons for the BJP, Congress, and all of India