New Delhi: With the issue of seat-sharing now in the rear screen, senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar on Saturday said there was never a "big brother" in the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance.
The two allies had announced the seat-sharing deal on Friday, although there is still some confusion over how many seats the BJP would actually contest. Of the 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra, what is certain is that the Shiv Sena will contest on 124 seats. The Sena will also get two berths in the Legislative Council from the BJP quota.
Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis said that the BJP would contest 150 seats, while 14 seats will go to smaller allies. He also said that ‘some’ allies would contest on the BJP symbol but a BJP press release later said that the party would contest 164 seats.
Even as the confusion remains, Javadekar, a union minister, said the “big brother” tag in the BJP-Sena combine was a media creation and underlined that no one in the alliance declared so.
He also exuded confidence that the two parties together will win more than 200 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly in the upcoming polls. "We are fighting as an alliance and the alliance will get more than 200 seats. We are very confident," he said.
The Sena and BJP had contested the state polls separately in 2014.
On Friday, addressing a joint press conference with Devendra Fadnavis, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said who was the “elder brother” in the alliance was not an issue.
Taking a dig at the Congress, Javadekar said the BJP is a party which works 24/7 and the moment 2019 elections ended, it started preparing for the next election, the Union minister said in an interaction with journalists.
"The Congress party could not find a replacement of its president for two months. Within those two months we had new working president in place, we launched our new massive membership drive and added eight crore members, making it a 19 crore-member party. It is huge," he said.
"So, we are working on the ground and our forte is booth. We remain among the people 24/7 for which people reward us," he asserted.
Asked about opposition's claim that the BJP is raising the abrogation of Article 370 provisions is state polls to divert attention from local issues, Javadekar said it is the people who are talking about the issue as it caught their imagination.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra besides Haryana will be held on October 21. Counting will take place on October 24.
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