Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena were “close to each other ideologically” and expressed hope that the parties would form an alliance for the General elections and state Assembly polls in 2019, reported PTI on Tuesday.

Fadnavis said the alliance of the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and some other parties has “consolidated the vote bank of the Opposition. “Both the parties [BJP and Shiv Sena] would suffer [due to division of votes] in case their candidates are pitted against each other,” Fadnavis told reporters on Monday. “We understand this political fact, so does the Shiv Sena. Hence, I think both the Shiv Sena and we will come together.”

The Shiv Sena is an ally of the BJP but ties between the two parties have been strained of late. In January, the Shiv Sena had said it would contest the Maharashtra Assembly elections as well as the Lok Sabha polls on its own.

Fadnavis also ruled out the possibility of the BJP tying up with the Nationalist Congress Party for the Assembly polls. The chief minister also said criticism of the BJP government in the state by Shiv Sena leaders and through its mouthpiece Saamana “does not have a bearing on the government”. “The government is run by the cabinet which is held peacefully,” Fadnavis said. “We discuss issues and take decisions unanimously. There has not been a single decision in the last four years that we took by vote.”

Fadnavis also rubbished media reports that cited a survey by a Delhi-based agency which claimed that six BJP MPs and around 50 legislators were likely to lose due to their “poor performance”. He said the party’s internal survey was “encouraging” and claimed more MLAs will be elected from the party during the Assembly polls.

The BJP had emerged as the single largest party in the 2014 Assembly elections, winning 122 of the state’s 288 Assembly seats.

When asked about the possibility of a BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in view of BJP state president Raosaheb Danve’s comment on Monday that the party’s internal survey showed it would win 200 seats, Fadnavis said Danve was speaking about the number of seats the BJP was capable of winning. “But we have to work together [with the Shiv Sena],” Fadnavis said. “We will decide on the number of seats to be shared and will contest.”

Asked if the Maratha and Dhangar communities, which have been demanding reservation, would still support the BJP in the polls, Fadnavis claimed that “historically” the demand for reservation and elections were unrelated.

Danve, meanwhile, said an alliance with the Shiva Sena could materialise on a formula that was agreed upon by BJP leader Pramod Mahajan and Sena chief Bal Thackeray in 1990, reported PTI. “It is our wish to contest the polls jointly with Sena because that party is our old ally of many years,” Danve said in Nagpur on Monday.