CM & Uddhav to hold first joint mega rally in Kolhapur

MUMBAI: A month after the BJP and Shiv Sena decided to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections as alliance partners, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis held a marathon meeting with Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray to draft an action plan for a joint campaign. It was decided at the meeting, held late on Tuesday, that that the alliance’s first mega rally will be held on March 24 in Kolhapur and will be addressed by both Fadnavis and Thackeray.
This mega rally will be preceded by rallies across the state, according to a statement issued by state industries minister Subhash Desai of the Sena.The two leaders will address election campaign meetings in Amravati and Nagpur on March 15, in Aurangabad and Nashik on March 17 and in Pune and Navi Mumbai on March 18. The dates for the alliance’s rally in Mumbai and the release of its manifesto will be decided later. In addition, there are plans for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to share the dais with Uddhav Thackeray.
BJP president Amit Shah, Union home minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath and transport minister Nitin Gadkari too are scheduled to address rallies across the state. “It has been proposed to organise at least 25 major rallies across Maharashtra and to cover all 48 Lok Sabha constituencies. We expect that our nominees will win with bigger margins than they got in the 2014 elections,” a senior BJP leader said.
Fadnavis was accompanied for the meeting with Sena leaders by state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar and revenue minister Chandrakant Patil, while Thackeray was accompanied by Subhash Desai and his aide Milind Narvekar. It has been agreed that out of the total 48 seats in Maharashtra, the BJP will contest 25, while the Sena will contest the remaining 23 seats.
The BJP leader said that BJP and Sena leaders are all geared up for the Lok Sabha elections. “In the 2014 LS polls, we had won 42 seats, and now we are determined to surpass that record and create history by sending the maximum number of MPs from Maharashtra,” he said.
To prevent any misunderstandings between the two parties, which have had a rocky alliance over the past 4.5 years, the BJP-Sena recently appointed a coordination panel comprising Subhash Desai and Chandrakant Patil.
On Wednesday, the saffron parties also cleared the air over two LS seats, Jalna and Pune, where contentious issues had arisen. Sena’s minister of state Arjun Khotkar was keen to contest the LS poll from Jalna against BJP state chief Raosaheb Danve, who is the sitting MP there, due to their rivalry at the local level. BJP guardian minister for Pune Girish Bapat was eager to contest the Pune LS seat where the sitting MP Anil Shirole, also from the BJP, is likely to be renominated.
At the meeting between Uddhav Thackeray and Fadnavis, it was decided that both the seat claimants would be poll coordinators for their respective regions: Khotkar for Marathwada (where Jalna is situated) and Bapat for western Maharashtra (of which Pune is a part). Sources said the two claimants are thus out of the poll fray and have to concentrate on coordination between party candidates and workers.