No Change in Seat-Sharing Formula With BJP for Maharashtra Polls, Says Uddhav Thackeray

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said in Mumbai on Wednesday that the seat-sharing formula agreed with the BJP for the coming Maharashtra Assembly election remained unchanged.

Why the question arose

In the past month, nearly 12 senior Congress and NCP leaders have joined the ruling BJP and Shiv Sena. This has fuelled speculation that the two allies could fight the Assembly polls separately, as they did in 2014.

Asked about this, Thackeray said the alliance had been announced in Mumbai before this year’s Lok Sabha election. “There is no change in the seat-sharing formula we have worked out since then,” he told reporters.

At a joint press conference in February, BJP president Amit Shah and Thackeray had said the two parties would contest “an equal number of seats” and leave the rest to other partners in the ruling alliance.

BJP’s view

State BJP president Chandrakant Patil said last week that the seat-sharing arrangement for the polls, due in September-October, would still have to be “worked out”, since the current position left little room for newcomers. He was replying to a question on whether the two parties would each contest 135 seats and leave 18 to smaller allies in the 288-member Assembly.

The BJP and the Shiv Sena fought the 2014 Assembly election separately but joined hands after the results to form the government.

What happened next

In the 2019 Maharashtra election, the BJP won 105 seats, the Shiv Sena 56, the NCP 54 and the Congress 44. After the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke, Uddhav Thackeray became Chief Minister in November 2019 with the support of the NCP and the Congress.

See also: Bharatiya Janata Party, elections.

Originally published on 28 August 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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