Mumbai: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) wants to field candidates in four constituencies — Mumbai North-East, Thane, Nashik and Pune in the forthcoming the Lok Sabha elections. The party chief, Raj Thackeray is currently negotiating for being a part of the mega-alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Congress and other parties.
However, since he has not received any signal from these parties, he now has threatened to ask for these seats to remain uncontested by the NCP-Congress alliance.
“MNS has a strong presence in these four constituencies. The party is currently planning its Lok Sabha strategy and we are very confident on winning in these four constituencies”, said a leader of the MNS. According to the leader, if the opposition did not fight together then the votes would get divided and it would in fact help the BJP-Sena parties. “The MNS can win these seats, if the NCP-Congress decides to support our party and not field their candidates”, said the leader.
Moreover, MNS has also offered to field candidates from in other constituencies as part of its strategy to damage the Sena by cutting into their votes. In 2009, the MNS had dented Sena-BJP in Mumbai, Thane and Nashik, which resulted in Congress-NCP winning all six seats in the above constituencies. On Monday, called for a party meeting to discuss of their Lok Sabha strategy, but the party has not issued an official statement regarding the decisions taken.