Bharatiya Janata Party Maharashtra unit chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule on Monday said that his party and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena will contest the state Assembly polls and the General Elections in 2024 together, reported ANI.
Bawankule said that the alliance under Shinde and his deputy Devendra Fadnavis was formed to win 45 Lok Sabha seats and over 200 state Assembly seats.
The BJP had earlier also announced that it will fight the Mumbai civic elections with the Shinde faction, which is known as the Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena, reported News18. The party had said it plans to install its mayor.
“When I say the Shiv Sena I mean the one following the real ideology of [late] Shiv Sena Supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, the one of Hindutva that is being followed by Eknath ji Shinde,” Fadnavis had said.
While the General and Assembly polls will take place in 2024, the voting for elections to 7,751 village panchayats will be held on December 18 and the results will be announced two days later.
The panchayat elections will be the first direct contest between the ruling BJP-Balasahebanchi Shiv Sena alliance and the coalition between the Congress, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) since Shinde’s rebellion.
The Shiv Sena had split into two factions in June after Shinde and a group of party MLAs rebelled against the former Maharashtra government – a coalition of the Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress.
After more than a week of political drama, the coalition was ousted from power as the Thackeray faction was reduced to a minority in the state Assembly. Shinde was sworn in as the chief minister of Maharashtra on June 30, while Fadnavis took oath as his deputy.
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