If both alliances break before the polls and all the parties go it alone, the BJP may win 112 seats, the Shiv Sena 62, NCP 38, and Congress 45. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) will get 11 and others will win 19 seats, it predicted.
After the demise of Balasahab Thackeray, there was a miniscule drop in the might of the Shiv Sena.
When Narendra Modi embarked on his ministerial journey, the party helped him win by doing an intelligent seat sharing and winning 18 out of 20 seats it contested.
The BJP had won 23 seats out of the total 48 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
The performance of Shiv Sena was undoubtedly impressive but the BP still emerged as the single largest party in the state.
According to various opinion polls, the alliance has lead in 240 of the 288 assembly segments. Neither wants to miss the chief minister’s post even by a whisker.
Now the BJP under the resurgent leadership of Amit Shah and riding on the ‘Modi Wave’ is demanding 135 of the 288 seats. The Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray’s leadership have been vying for the chief ministerial post and is reluctant to give BJP the desired number of seats.
It seems that the Shiv Sena has lost a bit of trust in its alliance partner and ruling BJP since it lost a bit of sheen in the assembly bypolls held in different states. So, it is now trying to mount pressure on BJP and extract as many as 150 seats.
But it will commit a blunder harping on the issue.
According to a recently conducted poll by ABP News and Nielsen, if both alliances break before the polls and all the parties go it alone, the BJP may win 112 seats, the Shiv Sena 62, NCP 38, and Congress 45. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) will get 11 and others will win 19 seats, it predicted.
Riding on the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the opinion poll indicates, the BJP will become the single largest party for the first time in the state assembly although it would be short of a simple majority.
The survey suggests the Shiv Sena will improve its present tally of 44, but will be in no position to form a government on its own. With the differences within the two political groups widening, sections of both alliances are demanding they should sever ties with their respective partners. Some BJP and Shiv Sena leaders are of the opinion that the two oldest allies should part ways and must contest alone. Similarly, the NCP too is ready to contest alone in the state.
The survey also suggested that if the BJP, Shiv Sena, Republican Party of India (RPI) and Swabhimani Paksha (SWP) remain together, the BJP is likely to win 122 seats in the 288-member assembly and the Shiv Sena may win 82 seats.RPI and SWP are expected to win three seats each.
The Congress-NCP alliance would win 55 seats. The survey indicates that the MNS can win 10 seats and others 13. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 42 of the 48 Lok Sabha seats from Maharashta in the general election and secured 49% of the votes. The survey indicates that in the assembly elections, the NDA will get 42% of votes while the vote share of the Congress-led alliance will be 28%.
If the Shiv Sena now does not listen to BJP, it will be behaving like Jaswant Singh who lost his position and seat.
