LS seats talks on in MVA, Sena will keep 19 it won in '19: Raut

MUMBAI: Preliminary seat-sharing talks for the Lok Sabha elections next year have started between Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners, and Shiv Sena (UBT) will contest all 19 seats where it has sitting MPs, said party MP Sanjay Raut on Friday.

"Reports of a 16-16-16 seat formula for the Lok Sabha polls are wrong. No such formula has been fixed. We have started preliminary seat-sharing talks.
We had a meeting with Sharad Pawar, we discussed the basic details. In Maharashtra, MVA will continue and fight the Lok Sabha and assembly polls as MVA, together. There are no differences among us and we will fight together," he said. NCP and Congress are the other parties in MVA.
Though some Sena MPs had joined the CM Eknath Shinde-led Sena, Sena (UBT) considers the seats theirs and will contest them all within MVA. Shiv Sena won 19 seats in 2019, but the Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena lost 13 to Shinde's Sena. Of its 19 MPs, 18 were from Maharashtra and one from Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
"There is no question of expectation. We have 19 MPs, and we will have 19 MPs in the Lok Sabha. These are our winning seats, so they will be with us only. NCP has 4 MPs, so there can't be any discussion on that. Congress won only one seat in Chandrapur, but it will remain with them. Seats won are seats won; after winning, some people have gone here and there, but a decision on that is pending. But those seats are of Shiv Sena," said Raut.
The BJP-Shiv Sena combine had won 41 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in 2019, while Congress won one and NC seats (see box).
After Mumbai North-West MP Gajanan Kirtikar, 79, joined the Shinde Sena, the Uddhav faction is left with six MPs. Earlier, 12 of the party's 19 MPs had asked the Lok Sabha Speaker in a letter last July they be identified as a "separate group" and appointing Mumbai South Central MP Rahul Shewale as their group leader. MP Bhavna Gawli was made the new chief whip.