The core committee meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party for government formation in Maharashtra at the caretaker  Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s residence remained inconclusive on Sunday afternoon, party leader Sudhir Mungantiwar said.

The core committee comprising CM Devendra Fadnavis, state unit head Chandrakant Patil, senior leaders Girish Mahajan, Sudhir Mungantiwar, Ashish Shelar and Pankaja Munde, met at 11 am on Sunday.

Former BJP minister Mungantiwar said the party will meet again at 4 pm to take a decision on the Governor’s invitation to form the government and the just held meeting discussed various aspects pertaining to Governor BS Koshyari’s invite to the BJP to consider forming the government by virtue of being the single largest party.

As there was no conclusive outcome of the meeting, now a decision of the central BJP is awaited. “After the central party’s indication is received, it will be discussed again at a meeting later this evening. Thereafter, a final decision will be taken on the Governor’s proposal and conveyed to Raj Bhavan,” news agency IANS quoted Mungantiwar as saying.

Meanwhile, Sena top leaders, including President Uddhav Thackeray, Aditya Thackeray and others held meetings with their MLAs currently staying under security at a resort in suburban Mud Island amid fear of poaching.

The Congress party too has already shifted its 44 MLAs at a resort in Jaipur to save them from any poaching attempts.

Senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday met the party’s newly elected MLAs from Maharashtra at Jaipur, to discuss the political situation in the state as the warring allies BJP and Shiv Sena have not cleared their stands on the government formation in the state. The BJP has though been invited by the Governor to form the government and all the parties are wary of poaching attempts to break other party’s MLAs in the course of any party’s attempt to form the government.

Maharashtra Congress leader Milind Deora today said that “Maharashtra’s Governor should invite NCP-Congress to form the government now.”

The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will have a meeting with all its MLAs in Mumbai on Tuesday.

The political activity in the state intensified after the Governor’s Saturday late-evening invitation to BJP to express its willingness and capabilities to form the next government in the state.

Given the unease, discomfort, and trading of barbs between the pre-election alliance partners the BJP and the Shiv Sena, it seems difficult for the BJP at the moment to prove majority on the floor of the house since the Shiv Sena is adamant on having an equal say in the new government and demanding that the new chief minister be from the regional party.

In the recent state polls, the BJP won 105 seats, while the Sena got 56, NCP got 54 while Congress won 44 in the 288-member Assembly.

The tenure of the last Assembly expired in the midnight of November 9-10.

(With inputs from IANS)