Shiv Sena not to contest Delhi assembly polls
While the Shiv Sena (UBT) has announced support for the AAP, the Shiv Sena (Shinde) faction’s decision to not contest the upcoming Delhi assembly.
NEW DELHI: The upcoming Delhi assembly polls will not have any contestants from either faction of the Shiv Sena.

While the Shiv Sena (UBT) has announced support for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Shiv Sena (Shinde) faction has decided to support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Delhi polls.
Addressing media persons in Thane, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde on Monday said his party decided to not contest the election “to avoid a split in Hindutva votes”.
“We have supported the BJP in the New Delhi elections as we wanted to avoid a split in the Hindutva votes and bring the NDA government to power there. We will, however, take a decision to fight solo in the local body elections after consulting with our alliance partners,” Shinde said.
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) (Ajit Pawar), another BJP ally, has fielded 30 contestants for the upcoming Delhi elections.
The NDA has given one seat each to the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). While JD-U has been allocated the Burari seat, the LJP will contest in Deoli.
The assembly polls in Delhi are scheduled for February 8.
A BJP leader said the decision to give seats to the JD-U and LJP was taken considering the sizeable Purvanchali population in Delhi.
According to a second BJP leader, the Shiv Sena began contesting polls in Delhi after the Ram Janamabhoomi Movement in the 1990s. In the 1993 state polls, the Sena fielded 22 contestants and secured 0.14% of the total votes, in 1998 it fielded 32 candidates but did not win a single seat and polled 0.23% votes. In 2003, it fielded 26 candidates and polled 0.24% votes with no wins. In 2008 and 2013, it had 9 candidates with 0.4% votes and 0.5% votes, respectively, with no seats. In 2015, 19 contestants were fielded and in 2020 only 5 were put up.
After the split in Shiv Sena in 2022, both factions are consolidating their positions in Maharashtra and that could be a reason why the parties are not focusing on contesting in either states.
Shinde’s comments come in the wake of reports that the Shiv Sena is miffed about two of its leaders being excluded from the list of guardian ministers in Maharashtra’s Raigad.
The Maharashtra government has named NCP minister Aditi Tatkare as guardian minister of Raigad, which led to over 30 party leaders and office bearers of the district resigning on Sunday.
BJP leaders, however, denied reports of differences having cropped up between the allies.
