• Source:JND
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In the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the negotiations over seat sharing in the Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA) remained unresolved until the last moment of nomination on Tuesday. The Samajwadi Party (SP), which was demanding five seats in the MVA, complicated matters by filing nominations in nine seats.

However, according to sources within the party, cited by Jagran.com, it has been decided that the SP's current MLAs, Abu Azmi and Rais Sheikh, will contest under the Mahavikas Aghadi banner. The remaining seven candidates were announced by the SP. The final clarity on the SP’s position within the MVA will emerge after the withdrawal of nominations on November 4.

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The SP is demanding five seats from the total 288 seats in the Maharashtra Assembly, including Dhule City and Malegaon Central, where SP President Akhilesh Yadav recently launched the party’s campaign with a public meeting. In the last election, the SP won the Mankhurd Shivajinagar and Bhivandi East seats in Mumbai. Additionally, the SP is demanding three more seats this time.

However, similar to Haryana, the Congress party in Maharashtra is also not willing to prioritise the SP. In response, the SP has adopted a pressure tactic by announcing its candidates for five seats in advance, and now it has declared candidates for a total of nine seats.

The SP has announced candidates for Mankhurd Shivajinagar and Bhivandi East, along with Nihal Ahmed from Malegaon Central, Irshad Jageerdar from Dhule City, Riyaaz Azmi from Bhivandi West, Devanand Saheb Rao Rochkari from Tuljapur, Dr Abdul Gaffar Qadri Syed from Aurangabad East, and Saeed Khan from Byculla.

Abu Azmi, the SP's state president in Maharashtra, stated that an agreement has been reached to allocate two seats under the Mahavikas Aghadi banner. He emphasised that the SP will contest elections on additional seats alongside the MVA.

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No Friendly Contest In MVA: Congress

Amid contention over seat sharing in the MVA, Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala categorically said Maharashtra party leadership has been asked to ensure all rebels withdraw nominations and asserted there will be no friendly fights among the MVA allies in the state assembly polls.

Maharashtra Assembly Polls: 8,000 Nominations Filed For 288 Seats

Approximately 8,000 candidates have submitted their nomination papers for the 288 Assembly seats in Maharashtra. The final date for filing nominations was Tuesday. As the nomination period ended, it remained unclear how many candidates each party had fielded and how many seats the coalitions had reserved for their smaller partner parties in both the ruling alliance and the opposition alliance, Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA).