Fadnavis & Uddhav to begin joint poll meetings from Friday

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will begin joint poll meetings of some select partymen from Friday.

The first meeting will be held at Amravati at 12.30 pm and the second joint meeting will be held at 3 pm at Nagpur on Friday.

The BJP and the Shiv Sena had last month decided to join hands for the elections.

Fadnavis had called on Thackeray at 'Matoshree', the latter's residence on Sunday to discuss the poll strategy.

"It was decided to hold joint meetings of key party workers of both the parties to give a message that they have to work together for the alliance candidates," a Sena source said.

The joint meetings will be held at different places, including Nagpur, Amravati, Kolhapur, Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and Konkan.

"On March 17 and 18, four more joint meetings will be held. Six hundred workers of each party will be invited to attend the meeting. It is different from party rallies. The campaign rally will begin after the nomination process," said a BJP office-bearer.

Both Sena and BJP have given responsibilities of different Lok Sabha constituencies to different leaders.

Subhash Desai of Sena and Ravindra Chavan of BJP will look after Sindhudurg-Ratnagiri, Maval and Raigad constituencies. Chavan will also look after Kalyan, Thane, Palghar and Bhiwandi constituencies, with the help of Sena leader Eknath Shinde.

Sena's Neelam Gorhe of and BJP's Girish Bapat will look after Pune, Baramati, Shirur, Solapur, Madha and Maval constituencies.

Nitin Bangude Patil of Sena and Chandrakant Patil of BJP will look after Satara, Sangli, Kolhapur and Hatkanangale constituencies.

Dada Bhuse of Sena and Girish Mahajan have been given the responsibility of Nashik, Dindori, Raver, Jalgaon, Dhule, Nandurbar, Nagar and Shirdi.

Sena's Arjun Khotkar and Pankaja Munde of BJP will bear the responsibility of the Marathwada region, while Dr Deepak Sawant of Sena and Chandrashekhar Bawankule of BJP will look after Vidarbha region.