Day after Ajit Pawar-Amit Shah meet, Mahayuti allies may meet today in Thane: Report

Amid uncertainty over the Mahayuti alliance's strategy vis-a-vis the upcoming Maharashtra assembly elections and its Chief Ministerial face in the state, leaders of the ruling bloc are likely to meet tonight in Thane. The meeting is likely to take place almost a day after Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and Union Home Minister Amit Shah's meeting in Delhi.

In this meeting, Pawar urged Shah to allocate seats for the upcoming assembly elections as soon as possible, ABP Majha reported. Before this, Pawar met the Union Home Minister in Delhi in July-end and demanded 80-90 seats for the NCP in the upcoming assembly polls as promised when the party joined the Mahayuti alliance. 

NCP-Ajit demanded to retain 54 seats which the undivided NCP won in the 2019 assembly elections. Apart from this, Pawar is also eyeing 20 seats against the Congress from Western Maharashtra, Marathwada and Northern Maharashtra (Khandesh).

He is also aiming to get 4-5 assembly seats from Mumbai against the Congress, which are dominated by minority vote bank. Moreover, the party completed the first round of internal survey for 40 seats. This survey suggests that most of the candidates will be retained as many of these MLAs contested for the first time in assembly polls in 2019. 

When discussions with alliance partners will take place, a few seats may either be exchanged or swapped. In such a scenario, NCP-Ajit is eyeing two seats in the Mumbai assembly -- Bandra East and Anushakti Nagar. In Thane, the party may demand Bhiwandi along with its traditional Kausa-Mumbra seat. 

This could cause some fissures in the alliance as the BJP and Shiv Sena also have ambitious plans. The BJP, on the other hand, has set its sights on 150 seats in the upcoming assembly polls. Maharashtra CM Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, on the other hand, is planning to contest on 126 out of 288 seats in the state elections.

The party won't settle for anything less than 100 seats, as per discussions at a high-level meeting held at the Varsha bungalow in July. In this meeting, Shinde presented 'Mission 100' for the party to achieve and asked party workers to focus on their respective constituencies. He also told MLAs to be prepared to contest from some other constituency and tell people about the schemes of the state government. 

Assembly elections in Maharashtra are likely to be held in October this year.