Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said ties between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-undivided Shiv Sena broke for the first time in 2014 as the latter insisted on contesting 151 assembly seats in the state polls against the offer of 147 seats.
Fadnavis was speaking at an event to felicitate Sikkim Governor Om Prakash Mathur in Mumbai on Monday night.
Mathur was BJP's Maharashtra in-charge in 2014.
Fadnavis said the BJP had then planned to contest 127 seats and was willing to offer 147 seats to the Shiv Sena (for elections to the 288-member state assembly).
"We gave the Shiv Sena an ultimatum to contest 147 seats, and we decided to contest 127 seats, even as we believed would win more than 200 seats. The Shiv Sena would have the chief minister's post, while the BJP would have its deputy CM," the BJP leader said.
"We were told that the 'yuvaraj' had announced to contest 151 seats, and they were not willing to back down on that number," Fadnavis added without taking any name.
Fadnavis said it seems the destiny then planned to make him the state's chief minister.
He also recounted discussions with senior BJP leader Amit Shah.
"We spoke with Amit Shah and told him this was not the way to treat us. He spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Shah, Mathur and I were confident that we could put up a strong fight in the 2014 assembly elections," he said.
Responding to Fadnavis' comments, Shiv Sena-UBT MP Sanjay Raut on Tuesday said a lot of things took place and claimed senior BJP leaders had already planned to snap ties with the Shiv Sena.
"Discussions were stretched for 72 hours over every seat. Om Mathur was (BJP's) Maharashtra in-charge at the time. I will admit honestly that Fadnavis was in favour of maintaining the alliance with the Shiv Sena. He wanted the alliance, but it broke because the party's (BJP) senior leaders wanted it to happen," Raut claimed.
The two parties contested the 2014 state polls separately, but the Shiv Sena joined hands with the BJP after the elections when it formed its government under Fadnavis' leadership.
The BJP and Shiv Sena (then undivided) again parted ways after the 2019 assembly polls over the issue of sharing the chief minister's post.
The Shiv Sena split in 2022 after a section of MLAs led by Eknath Shinde rebelled against Uddhav Thackeray's leadership.
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