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Maharashtra Governor cancels Delhi trip as Sena-NCP-Cong meet to finalise power sharing arrangement
The two-day conference of the Governors is being inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday and will conclude with the prime minister’s address on Saturday. Koshyari decided against attending it since attempts to form a government in the state have peaked.
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Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari has cancelled his trip to attend the annual Governors’ conference in Delhi, while the Shiv Sena, NCP and the Congress meet in Mumbai to finalise power sharing arrangement. A formal announcement of the proposed alliance between the three is also expected later today.
The two-day conference of the Governors is being inaugurated by President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday and will conclude with the prime minister’s address on Saturday.
“The Governor was supposed to fly to New Delhi on Thursday afternoon but he chose to postpone it and later cancelled the trip owing to the political uncertainty in Maharashtra,” said a Raj Bhavan official, wishing anonymity.
Maharashtra is under the president’s rule since November 12 after none of the political parties could muster the required numbers to form a government.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar, senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray along with other top leaders from all the three parties are meeting at Nehru Centre in Worli to formalize the formula governing the new coalition. They are also expected to announce when they will approach the Governor to stake a claim to form the new government.
The possible new alliance in Maharashtra began taking shape after Shiv Sena’s insistence for keeping the chief minister’s position led to a break in its three-decades-old alliance with the BJP. The BJP-Sena combination had comfortably won the state elections held in October.
Shiv Sena has asked its legislators not to leave Mumbai for next couple of days. All Sena MLAs are being put up at a posh hotel, The Lalit, in suburban Mumbai.
