Ad hoc alliances in high-stakes battle

Maharashtra poll will test factions of two key regional parties aligned with opposing camps.

Battle lines have been drawn for the crucial electoral contest in Maharashtra with nominations being filed in all the 288 seats across the state on the last day, on Tuesday. But the lines are still blurred. While the parties in the Mahayuti and the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – the two contending alliances – have scrambled to file nominations, there is no certainty if this is the final line-up. Bargaining continued till the last day and is still continuing.

There are mutual rivalries and contests within the alliances. The BJP which leads the Mahayuti has announced 148 candidates and the Congress, leading the MVA, has announced 103. The Shiv Sena led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and the NCP (Ajit Pawar) have announced their lists but they have lined up more candidates than on the lists. The Shiv Sena led by Uddhav Thackeray has said it would contest 96 seats, but the alliance is yet to announce the seat-sharing arrangement.

Both the alliances are unstable, being ad hoc unions of parties widely different from each other. The BJP split the state’s two main regional parties and allied with one faction of each, and the election will be a major test for both of them. The leading parties of the alliances too have major stakes in the elections. A defeat for the BJP will deal a blow to the party at the national level, to the Central government, and to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A defeat for the Congress will hurt the party whose prospects had seemed to be looking up after the Lok Sabha election. While the loyalties of alliance partners are questionable, the loyalties of candidates to their parties are equally brittle. Many of them have shifted parties more than once and could do so again.

There are more than 100 rebels and many proxy candidates; many of them might continue in the fray even after the withdrawals. Friendly contests between parties in the same alliance are possible in some seats if there is no agreement on the party picked to contest. The BJP has in public expressed its opposition to a candidate whom the NCP (Ajit Pawar) has proposed and has even denounced him. The situation might become clearer after the last day for withdrawal of nominations, but even that is uncertain.

Maharashtra also has a number of small parties that can win some seats and influence the outcome in others. The picture presented by the state is not one of alliances and parties in contest, but one mostly of individuals chasing seats. The free-for-all may also have an impact on the post-election situation, especially because six different parties and candidates with multiple present and past loyalties are in the fray.

Assembly Elections 2024 | The Maharashtra Assembly polls will take place against the backdrop of a fractured political landscape in the western state where the Shiv Sena and NCP will be going up against the Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar factions, even as the BJP and Congress try to make their mark. Meanwhile, in Jharkhand, the JMM faces a new challenge after Hemant Soren's recent arrest and Champai, a longstanding party member, joining the BJP. The Haryana election resulted in a shock loss for Congress, which was looking to galvanize on the Lok Sabha poll performance, while J&K also saw the grand old party eventually stepping away from the cabinet, with Omar Abdullah's JKNC forming government. It remains to be seen if the upcoming polls help BJP cement its position further or provide a fillip to I.N.D.I.A. Check live updates and track the latest coverage, live news, in-depth opinions, and analyses only on Deccan Herald.

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