On Monday, just a day before the nomination deadline, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) chief Sharad Pawar announced that the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has reached an agreement on 90-95% of the 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra. In a pointed comment aimed at the BJP, Pawar remarked that their contest is against those responsible for causing splits in rival parties and compromising on ideological principles.
Those who are in power did not solve problems of the people. We are fighting against those who engineered splits in political parties, made unnecessary compromises with their ideology and did things they were not supposed to do," Sharad Pawar said.
Those who are in power did not solve problems of the people, he claimed. He claimed that those currently in power have failed to address the issues facing the public. The Maharashtra assembly elections are set for November 20, with vote counting on November 23. The deadline for filing nomination papers is October 29.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), consisting of the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction), Congress, and Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT), is in the fray. The Shiv Sena split in June 2022, leading to the fall of Thackeray’s MVA government, while the Sharad Pawar-led NCP divided into two factions in July 2023 after his nephew Ajit Pawar joined the ruling coalition.
In March this year, Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis responded to criticisms of his 2019 assembly poll campaign line, "I will be back," by asserting that he did indeed return to power in June 2022, following Eknath Shinde's rebellion — and achieved it "by splitting two parties."