Pune: The Sharad Pawar faction of NCP went back to its MVA partners to jointly fight the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) election after the much-hyped talks for a possible alliance with the other camp led by his nephew and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar failed on Friday night. In the opposition bloc, Congress, NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) discussed contesting 50 seats each while leaving the remaining 15 to other constituents.For nearly a week, Ajit Pawar had been camping in Pune to explore options for an alliance after his Mahayuti partners — BJP and Shiv Sena — decided to go together in the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad civic bodies. “There were some disagreements, but we are still hopeful about the positive outcome of these meetings between the two factions of NCP,” Subhash Jagtap, Pune city unit chief of NCP, said. NCP (SP)’s state president Shashikant Shinde said some office bearers were strongly in favour of a tie-up with Ajit Pawar’s party for PMC. “However, NCP insisted that all the candidates of the alliance should contest on the party’s symbol, clock. We are not going to compromise on our symbol; hence, there was no consensus,” he said.Soon after the discussion between the two NCPs hit a dead end, NCP (SP) returned to its allies in MVA. In a marathon meeting held on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, representatives of Congress, NCP (SP) and Shiv Sena (UBT) discussed a seat-sharing formula. Interestingly, though Raj Thackeray’s MNS is not an official member of MVA, its office bearers from Pune attended the meeting.NCP (SP) member Ankush Kakade, who was present in the meeting, said, “Before the meeting began, we had a discussion with our working president Supriya Sule, who was of the opinion that we continue with our long-time allies of MVA. We have started the discussion in the direction of contesting the PMC poll as MVA.” While a seat-sharing formula is yet to be finalised, the preliminary discussion suggests that Congress, NCP (SP) and Sena (UBT) may get 50 seats each to contest, while the remaining 15 seats out of the 165 will be shared with other alliance partners. “Since MNS is not an official partner in MVA, it may get its share from the Sena (UBT) quota,” a Sena (UBT) member said.
