‘Take it or leave it’, MVA offers 4 Maha LS seats to Prakash Ambedkar's VBA

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said on Friday that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has offered four Lok Sabha seats to the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), which is for the latter “to consider”.

Sanjay Raut seemed to point a finger at Prakash Ambedkar for the current deadlock in the MVA seat-sharing talks in Maharashtra, saying “now, it's up to the VBA to consider the proposal” (of four Parliamentary seats).

However, Ambedkar has again accused Raut of ‘lying’ before the media, and said that there are a total of 15 seats out of the 48 in the state on which a serious stalemate continues among the MVA allies -- the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (SP), and the Shiv Sena (UBT).

“There are at least 10 seats which both the Congress and SS (UBT) are claiming, and another five constituencies which all the three partners are rooting for, and none of them are willing to concede even one seat,” claimed Ambedkar while speaking with mediapersons in Amravati.

He said that unless the MVA allies hammer out their internal issues, it would be difficult for the VBA to discuss the matter and complete the seat-sharing process.

Countering Ambedkar for "making misleading statements", Raut reiterated that the VBA’s list of 27 ‘winnable’ seats was given to the MVA leaders who discussed it, and from those 27, they have decided to allot four seats to Ambedkar, who has to take a final call.

Later on Friday evening, the MVA leaders are expected to meet for the final round of discussions, though Ambedkar has contended that the VBA has not been invited for the crucial negotiations.

With the Election Commission of India set to announce the Lok Sabha poll schedule on Saturday, the MVA leaders are confident that they will be ready to declare the seat-sharing formula in the next couple of days, or early next week.

They also assured that the allotment of seats would be amicable, taking all the big and small allies along, as all would unite to unseat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.