Nagpur: As the final nominations are in, it has become clear that Congress has failed to secure enough seats on the MVA bargaining table. Congress managed to eke out around 100 seats in the MVA alliance. In comparison, BJP walked away with around 150 in the seat-sharing haggling match within Mahayuti. The majority mark in the Maharashtra legislature is 145.
While it's clear that Congress is way off the mark, opinion is divided on who is responsible for it. Last week, reports surfaced that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi chided the state-level leaders for a poor seat-sharing deal, though these reports were denied by the party.
A Vidarbha-based Congress leader said the entire bargaining game was lost by his party because of two reasons. "First, the internal differences within our state leaders. Second reason was that unlike Mahayuti, our two regional allies are extremely hard bargainers with a hotline to our high command," he said.
"Both NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) have direct access to Congress high command. Sharad Pawar, for obvious reasons, was able to speak anytime with our decision-makers whenever the bargaining became too hot," the leader said.
"At the same time, Shiv Sena Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut can apparently dial in Rahul Gandhi at any point, thus making local leaders redundant in case of a deadlock," said the leader. He added that in Mahayuti, neither Ajit Pawar nor Eknath Shinde can directly call PM Narendra Modi or Amit Shah, and that went in favour of BJP's state unit during bargaining sessions.
Another Nagpur-based leader, who is also an ex-minister, said Congress leaders from western Maharashtra scuttled some hard bargaining by state president Nana Patole and LoP Vijay Wadettiwar. "Patole has an alpha-male type personality, and that is reflected in the bargaining talks for seats. He was driving a hard bargain for seats. While he may not always be right, ultimately it was important for the party to stick together," he added. "It seems some encouraged our allies to take the issue up with the high command," he said.
Sena's Sanjay Raut went on to say that till Patole is part of the team leading the discussions, they won't be part of it. Ultimately, Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat was made the coordinator for the party.
The ex-minister said, "If Patole and team received the back-up from our party, we would not have yielded so many seats to allies."
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