Thane: Ahead of the state Assembly polls slated for October 21, as many as 26 Shiv Sena corporators from Kalyan East constituency and around 300 party workers have submitted their resignations to party chief Uddhav Thackeray.

Supporting rebel Shiv Sena candidate, Dhananjay Bodare, those who tendered their resignations were miffed over Kalyan East seat falling into the BJP's quota. Shiv Sena and BJP are contesting Maharashtra Assembly polls in alliance.

Though both BJP and the Shiv Sena are claiming that everything is alright within their respective parties, there are several rebel candidates from both parties in different constituencies in Maharashtra.

"We have resigned from the party so that our senior leaders from Shiv Sena do not face an embarrassing situation. As they have already announced an alliance and have appealed to support the alliance candidate who is from BJP, which we cannot do and hence decided to resign," said Sharad Patil, Shasnyojak of Shivsena from Kalyan.

The rebel candidate Dhananjay Badore said, "I have  decided to contest polls as an independent candidate because in the last ten years there is no development in our area and people are just suffering, we cannot accept BJP candidate as our MLA, and hence I am contesting against him."

On the other hand, Uddhav Thackeray has issued several appeals to the rebel candidates of his party contesting against BJP candidates, after which some have withdrawn their nominations.

Uddhav Thackeray had apologised during Dussehra rally to all his party workers who could not get tickets and appealed to them to support alliance candidates.

As per the seat-sharing pact between BJP and Shiv Sena, BJP will be contesting 150 seats while Shiv Sena will contest 124 in the Assembly elections in Maharashtra. Other allies have 14 seats.

Maharashtra, which has 288-member Assembly, will go to polls on October 21, while the counting of votes will take place on October 24.