Ajit Pawar on Mahayuti seat-sharing: 'NCP to contest over 60 seats in Maharashtra elections'

Ajit Pawar's faction of the NCP won just 1 seat in the Lok Sabha elections this year. (File Photo: PTI)

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Ajit Pawar on Thursday said that his party will contest more than 60 seats as part of the Mahayuti alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena (Balasaheb) in the elections to the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly slated to be held this year.

Seen as a litmus test for Pawar and his faction, especially after the below-par performance in the Lok Sabha elections, the NCP chief said that seat-sharing among alliance partners should be based on merit and pointed out that the party won 56 seats in the previous elections and would stake its claim to contest a higher number of seats this time around.

“We won 56 seats in the 2019 Assembly polls and have around six-seven Independent MLAs with us. So, we wish to contest these 60 seats. But we will definitely seek more, and it will be decided on electoral merit,” Ajit Pawar said in an interview to The Indian Express.

Pawar’s claims comes amid reports of the NCP being deliberately sidelined by the BJP after the former failed to make a mark in the Lok Sabha elections held earlier this year. The RSS, the ideological mentor of the BJP, has held the NCP responsible for the saffron party’s poor performance in the polls.

The Mahayuti alliance is yet to officially begin seat-sharing talks for polls expected to be held in November this year. In the Lok Sabha elections this year, the Ajit Pawar faction of the NCP managed to win just 1 seat while the faction led by his uncle Sharad Pawar bagged 8. The Congress emerged as the party with the maximum seats (13), followed by the BJP (9), Shiv Sena (UBT) at 9 and the Shinde Sena at 7.

Asked about the NCP’s lackadaisical performance, Ajit Pawar sought to deflect the blame on the BJP’s ‘Abki Baar 400 Paar’ slogan, claiming that it allowed the Opposition to run home with its narrative that a brute majority to the NDA would allow it to alter the Constitution and end reservations.

“Ab ki baar, 400 paar slogan did not go down well as the people thought that after winning 400 seats, the NDA government would change the Constitution, bring in Uniform Civil Code, implement the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), abolish reservation… Also, because of the ‘400 paar’ campaign, our party workers got relaxed, thinking it (the election) was a cakewalk,” Pawar told IE.

Pawar also brushed aside the criticism that the he compromised on the NCP’s secular ideology by allying with the Shiv Sena and the BJP, parties seen as pro-Hindu. “When we started the discussion on the alliance, we clearly stated that our ideology was ‘secular’ and we would not compromise on it, at all,” Pawar claimed.

He also pointed out that such questions were never raised when the undivided NCP was in alliance with the Shiv Sena. “The hardcore Hindutvawadi party was the Shiv Sena… But you (the Congress and united NCP) were in government with the Shiv Sena for two-and-a-half years (the 2019-June 2022 Maha Vikas Aghadi government)… I was also a part of it. So why were such questions not asked then? Where was this secular ideology and progressive thought?”

Pawar slammed those questioning the NCP for joining the Mahayuti government with the sole agenda of development and a clear stand that it will not compromise on its secular ideology.

Asked who will be the chief ministerial face for the elections and whether the Mahayuti would announce a CM face ahead of elections, Pawar said that the primary objective of the alliance is to secure a majority and form a government.

“Then we can think about the CM face. But the CM will surely be of the Mahayuti.”