Goa polls: NCP-Shiv Sena seat-sharing talks today

Mumbai, Jan 18: NCP and Shiv Sena leaders will meet in Goa on Tuesday to discuss a pre-poll alliance between the two parties in the coastal state for the next month's assembly elections, the Sharad Pawar-led outfit said on Monday.

The two Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies in Maharashtra are contemplating an alliance in Goa after the Congress declined to have seat adjustments with them for the February 14 polls to the 40-member assembly.

NCP spokesperson and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik told reporters here that the outcome of the final talks with the Shiv Sena will be announced by his senior party colleague Praful Patel. He said MVA minister and NCP leader Jitendra Awhad will accompany Patel to Goa for the seat-sharing talks.

Malik said the NCP has aligned with the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Congress in Manipur for the upcoming polls in these states. Referring to Goa, where the BJP is in power, Malik said the local leadership of the Congress has declined to have seat adjustments with them and hence the Shiv Sena and the NCP have decided to contest the polls together. The Congress is part of the Shiv Sena-led MVA government in Maharashtra.

The NCP spokesperson hit back at BJP leader and former CM Devendra Fadnavis over his reported comments referring to the Sharad Pawar-led party as an outfit whose influence is "restricted to three-and-a-half districts of Maharashtra". Malik said Fadnavis (51) was not even a member of the state legislature when Pawar was chief minister.

Pawar (81) has served as chief minister of Maharashtra multiple times after assuming the top post for the first time in 1978. "Everyone knows how the NCP fared in the 2019 assembly polls when Fadnavis who was chief minister," Malik said.