As MVA works out seat-sharing, the takeaways: Good deal for Uddhav, Congress cedes three seats

After months of back and forth, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) Opposition alliance in Maharashtra on Tuesday announced a seat-sharing arrangement for the Lok Sabha elections. The Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) will contest 21 of the 48 constituencies in the state, the Congress 17, and the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) will contest 10 constituencies.

Though his party split in 2022 and has lost most of its legislators to the Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Uddhav Thackeray has managed to retain an upper hand in the seat-sharing. It will be in the fray from all five regions in the state: Konkan, western Maharashtra, Marathwada, north Maharashtra, and Vidarbha. The party has retained Mumbai, Konkan, and north Maharashtra where it has traditionally done well.

The NCP (SP) has prioritised concentrating its resources on fewer seats but with a higher possibility of victory. Instead of bargaining hard with allies, the Pawar-led party has kept with it the seats where it retains a sizeable presence and influential leaders despite last year’s split.

The Congress that got 26 seats in its seat-sharing deal with the NCP five years ago but contested 25, giving one to the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi. This time, forced to cede space to allies, the number of constituencies that the party will contest has come down further. Initially, the differences between the Congress and the other two parties were said to have extended to more than 10 seats. In the end, the breakthrough was achieved after the Congress ceded Sangli and Mumbai South-Central to Sena (UBT) and the Bhiwandi to NCP (SP).

The grand old party, which was the bigger partner in the earlier alliance with the undivided NCP, has now been reduced to two seats in Mumbai. With