Irate over the inordinate delays in finalizing the seat-sharing, the Maharashtra Samajwadi Party (SP) has given a day's ultimatum to the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) to take a decision, failing which it would go solo in the state Assembly elections, here on Friday.
An apparently livid Samajwadi Party state president Abu Asim Azmi today appealed to MVA ally and Nationalist Congress Party (SP) President Sharad Pawar and discussed his grievances and the need to allot seats to the smaller allies on priority.
Emerging from the meeting, Azmi said that the procrastination over giving seats to smaller allies was "not good" for the alliance and was creating doubts and uncertainties among the partners.
We have already announced our candidates for five seats… We will see that they win. If they are not going to allocate share by tomorrow, then we will leave MVA and contest separately. I have candidates ready for as many as 25 seats. We will field them", warned Azmi.
He says he is losing faith in the Congress as it has repeatedly been assuring that the issue would be resolved in a day or so, but that does not seem to be happening, with the Congress-SS purportedly at loggerheads over some seats.
At the eleventh hour, they would tell us nothing could be done on the day of the deadline for nominations and that all seats have already been given out and we had been excluded," Azmi said of what he said were his 'past experiences' with the Lok Sabha.
The MVA's chief allies, Congress-NCP (SP)-SS have been in the drawn-out and multiple rounds of talks for sharing 288 Assembly seats almost exhausting the other partners who would like to announce their candidates, file nomination, and begin the poll campaign.
Till now, the three parties have agreed on 85 seats each (255), and loosely agreed on another 15 seats (270), while the remaining 18 shall be distributed among the allies like SP, Peasants & Workers Party, CPI, CPI (M), AAP, etc.
Three allies have announced candidates for almost 140 seats in the first lists, and names are expected to trickle in within a day or two before the October 29 deadline for filing nominations with the Election Commission of India.
As a pre-emptive step, the SP has declared five candidates and other fringe partners have also short-listed a few of theirs but are all waiting eagerly for the nod from the big three.
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