Mumbai: In a dramatic development, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday said that the party would not be able to form the government in Maharashtra since it does not have the required mandate.
Senior BJP leaders including caretaker Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis met Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari this evening and informed him that the party could not stake claim to form the government as ally Shiv Sena was not willing to cooperate.
Talking to the media, Maharashtra BJP President, Chandrakant Patil said that the people of Maharashtra gave the mandate to the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance but the Uddhav Thackeray-led party is not ready to support the government formation.
“We got a good mandate and we could have formed the government comfortably,” he said.
The mandate was for Mahayuti and since Shiv Sena is not ready to support government formation we have told the Governor that we will not be able to form the government, Chandrakant Patil added.
In the Assembly polls, the BJP won 105 seats while ally Sena won 56 seats. The majority mark in the 288-member state Assembly is 145.
However, since the poll results were announced on October 24, both the parties have been bickering over the chief minister’s post, resulting in a stalemate over government formation.