Lok Sabha Elections: PM Modi, Uddhav Thackeray to share dais at Maharashtra’s Latur

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will share dais, for the first after the two political parties announced pre-poll alliance for ensuing Lok Sabha Elections, at a rally in Maharashtra on Tuesday. 

According to reports, PM Modi and Thackeray will address a public gathering at Ausa in Latur in support of the alliance candidates in that district and Osmanabad, where polling will be held on April 18, BJP spokesman Keshav Upadhyay said on Sunday.

The two leaders last shared the dais in Mumbai in December 2016 at a function to lay the foundation stone of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj memorial off the Arabian Sea.

On Saturday, the prime minister addressed a rally in Nanded, where state Congress president and former chief minister Ashok Chavan is contesting against BJP's Pratap Chikhalikar.

The Sivh Sena, which has been one of the most open alliance partners of the BJP and policies of the NDA government, entered into a seat-sharing pact with it recently after the ruling party's president, Amit Shah, visited Thackeray at his residence. The BJP and Sena will contest on 25 and 23 seats, respectively, in Maharashtra. The state has 48 Lok Sabha constituencies.

Earlier, the two parties went separate ways after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and contested the Maharashtra Assembly elections held later that year on their own.

The BJP-led government under the leadership of Devendra Fadnavis took charge in the state in October 2014 and the Shiv Sena joined it in December that year. Polling for the 48 Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra will be held in four phases on April 11, 18, 23 and 29, and the results will be declared on May 23.

With PTI Inputs