MVA is united, will decide on CM post in Maharashtra within a day: Pilot

PTI New Delhi: Confident of an MVA win in Maharashtra, Congress general secretary Sachin Pilot on Friday said there would not be any issue among alliance constituents in deciding on the CM post after getting a majority and it would not take more than a day to "figure out who will get what position". Pilot, who was given the charge by the party in the Marathwada region and campaigned extensively in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and in constituencies where bypolls are taking place, dismissed indications by exit polls that the BJP alliance in the two states would get a majority.

In an interview with PTI a day before the results, Pilot said the results of the assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand as well as to the bypolls in various states will provide a "reality check" to the BJP and the NDA. On the party's prospects in the recent round of assembly polls after the Haryana defeat, the Congress general secretary said Haryana was a setback and a very surprising one but Maharashtra and Jharkhand were a "separate story". "There is a visible desire among voters to have a change in Maharashtra because this double engine government that was running was not living up to any of the expectations that the voters had," he said. "The kind of campaign we ran, the kind of guarantees we promised, our coalition partners, candidate selection, our narrative was positive and was well received. So I think we are going to see a change of government in Maharashtra," Pilot, who held a total of 55 public meetings during the assembly polls campaign, including more than two dozen in Maharashtra alone, said. In Jharkhand, a sitting CM was put behind bars on some grounds and ultimately got relief from the Supreme Court. This kind of misuse of central agencies has not gone down well with the electorate of the state, he said.

"The BJP doesn't have a credible face in Jharkhand. I think in both the states, the INDIA bloc partners are in a good position to form governments," Pilot told PTI. Talking about the impact of polls on the central government in case the INDIA bloc wins in the two states, he said, "It is not our job to make the government stable and unstable, it is the contradictions within their alliance that will end up doing that."