MVA summons its winners to Mumbai; Congress rejects enclosure plan | India news

MUMBAI: Maha Vikas Aghadi comprising NCP (SP), Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress has summoned all its winning candidates to Mumbai immediately after the poll results are announced on Saturday.
It is not fear of poaching that has driven this decision but the idea of ​​all lawmakers in the alliance to be under one roof, MVA sources said, adding that their alliance was confident of securing a clear majority.
“Senior MVA functionaries met on Friday to discuss the political situation and decided to call all the newly elected legislators to the city on Saturday itself. We will discuss government formation,” said former minister and UBT Sena politician Anil Parab. The meeting was attended by Parab, UBT Sena MPs Sanjay Raut and Anil Desai and Congress’s Balasaheb Thorat.
Raut said the Sena (UBT) had made “arrangements” in Mumbai for their rural MLAs to stay in the state. “Old MLAs have some arrangements but new ones may not,” he said.
Sharad Pawar on Friday claimed that the MVA would secure 157 seats, while Uddhav Thackeray put the figure at 160. MPCC president Nana Patole was confident of 150 to 155 seats. Sources in the Congress said an internal survey revealed that MVA would win 158 seats while Mahayuti would get 113. The survey showed that the BJP would emerge as the single largest party with 67 seats.
AICC general secretary Ramesh Chennithala dismissed reports that the MVA wants to shift its legislators to neighboring states. “Our legislators have remained loyal even during the worst of crises, so there is no reason to shift them out of Maharashtra,” he said.
Parab said that specific instructions had been given to all MVA candidates that they should be alert during counting of votes and if any untoward incident took place, it should be immediately reported to the Returning Officer; if there was no response, the case was to be escalated.
Chennithala said he was confident that the MVA would form the government “with a clear majority” and that there was no disagreement over the CM’s post. The decision on the CM would be taken after consulting all senior MVA functionaries and the AICC brass, he said.
Incidentally, the state has seen two rounds of hotel and resort politics in the last five years – once in 2019 when the Shiv Sena walked out of the alliance with the BJP and formed the MVA, and then in 2022 when Eknath Shinde rebelled against Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership . with 40 MLAs. While in 2019 several NCP MLAs had flown to Surat and then returned to form the MVA government, in 2022 Sena MLAs supporting Shinde first went to Surat, then Guwahati and then to Goa from where they returned back after Shinde took oath as CM .