Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi eyes 27 Maha LS seats, wants to put up Jarange-Patil

Mumbai: The Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) led by Prakash Ambedkar is coveting 27 Lok Sabha seats where it has built up a strong base and wants a ticket for Maratha leader and Shivba Sanghatana chief Manoj Jarange-Patil from Jalna.

The VBA submitted a proposal on the seats it claims are election-ready strongholds to the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (SP)-Shiv Sena (UBT) and other parties at its meeting on Wednesday.

Besides Jarange-Patil, it has sought the candidature of Dr. Abhijit Vaidya from Pune plus three minority nominees and at least 15 OBC contestants across the state, VBA Vice-President Dhairyavardhan H. Pundkar told mediapersons after emerging from the MVA meeting.

The VBA's list of bastions includes constituencies like Akola, Amravati, Nagpur, Bhandara-Gondia, Chandrapur, Hingoli, Osmanabad, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Beed, Solapur, Sangli, Madha, Raver, Dindori, Shirdi, Ramtek, Satara, Nashik, Maval, Dhule, Nanded, Buldhana and Wardha.

It has listed three important seats in Mumbai -- Mumbai North-East, Mumbai South-Central and Mumbai North-Central -- making the situation tricky for all the MVA allies.

VBA spokesperson Siddharth Mokle said that the party has given a list of its potential winning seats, and now it will hold negotiations with the MVA allies on how many constituencies it would actually contest.

The other MVA allies have not yet reacted to VBA's proposal, but leaders indicated that the seat-sharing talks are almost finalised and would be announced soon.