BJP spokesman Prakash Jawdekar said today that Chavan should provide more details of this `serious allegation,' which he made in Sambhajinagar recently. They also wanted to know why Chavan had been silent about it all this time. Chavan allegedly claimed that the Intelligence Bureau had prepared a report on the same. Pawar was also responsible for keeping the Mumbai riots of Feb-March 1993 raging, since he did not sanction the deployment of the army then, (Pawar was then defence minister) Chavan is supposed to have said.

Jawdekar also said the party demanded an explanation from Pawar on the allegations, since never before had such serious allegations been made against a (former) chief minister of Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, both the BJP and Shiv Sena were holding talks with 30 of theindependent MLAs of Maharashtra, who had stood by the alliance in the just dissolved assembly, Jawdekar informed.

The alliance was willing to leave those assembly seats for them provided they canvassed for the Lok Sabha candidates of the alliance in those constituencies. Also, the independants would be required to publicly declare that they were ``supported'' by the alliance in their campaign of the assembly seats.