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Which brings us back to that empty chair. The friction reportedly isn’t really about any one meeting. It’s about turf. Thane, a municipal corporation of 131 seats, has long been Shinde’s fortress. The BJP, now the bigger partner, wants a bigger slice of it, and of Mumbai, and of every civic body worth winning. Every seat the BJP claims inside Sena strongholds chips away at the one asset Shinde can’t afford to lose: the claim that he, not the BJP, owns the Marathi vote in these pockets.