Ahead of Maharashtra Assembly polls twenty-six Shiv Sena corporators and around 300 workers have sent their letters of resignation to party chief Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday as a protest against the decision to concede Kalyan East Assembly seat to BJP candidate instead of Shiv Sena’s Dhananjay Bodare.

Currently the contentious seat is held by an independent MLA.

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“We have resigned so our senior leaders from Shiv Sena do not face an embarrassing situation. As they have already announced an alliance and have appealed to support the alliance candidate who is from BJP, which we cannot to do and hence decided to resign,” Sharad Patil, one of those who resigned was quoted by news agency ANI.

ANI further stated that resignation letters had been sent to party chief Thackeray, Cabinet Minister Eknath Shinde and Kalyan MP Shrikant Shinde.
16 of the corporators who resigned are from the Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation and the rest 10 rest represent the Ulhasnagar Municipal Corporation.

The rebel candidate Dhananjay Badore announced that he will contest as an independent candidate. He said, “I have decided to contest polls as an independent candidate because in the last 10 years there is no development in our area and people are just suffering, we cannot accept BJP candidate as our MLA and hence I am contesting against him.”

Out of 288 assembly seats in Maharastra, Shiv Sena has announced last week to contest on 124 seats while BJP will contest on 164 seats with smaller allies.

In the last few months, the talks between the two parties hadn’t been smooth. Shiv Sena was hoping for a 50:50 seat-sharing formula, similar to what happened in this year’s Lok Sabha elections. A certain section of the party leaders even pushed for ending the alliance if their demands were not fulfilled.
Maharashtra will go to the polls on October 21 and votes will be counted on October 24. Results will be declared on the same day.

On 288 seats in the state, BJP-Shiv Sena alliance and Congress-Nationalist Congress Party combinations will be competing for power.

BJP and Shiv Sena had ended their alliance in 2014 Maharashtra elections. They got together only after the electorate delivered a split verdict.

In the 2014 elections, the BJP and the Shiv Sena had contested separately over a dispute over sharing of seats.The BJP won maximum 122 out of 260 seats it had contested while the Sena bagged 63 out of 282 seats.

Both the parties later joined hands to form a BJP-led government.

Assembly elections will be held in Maharashtra in a single phase on October 21. Counting of votes will take place on October 24 and the results will be out on the same day. The five-year term of the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra expires on November 9.