Maharashtra’s assembly election has for long been a fertile ground for spoilers — to the extent that the potential for vote-cutters is often vastly overstated, as happened with Mayawati’s BSP in the 2004 election. Yet, as the state goes to polls today, it can be contended that its politics has never appeared as fragmented. The ruling Congress-NCP alliance and the main opposition coalition, the BJP-Shiv Sena, have waded into the fray with many of their own contesting as rebels. Scattered around are a third front (with the Athavale unit of the Republican Party of India) and a fourth (with Prakash Ambedkar’s RPI and Badruddin Ajmal’s UDF). The BSP is still around with a more muted campaign. And then there is Raj Thackeray’s MNS. Superimposed on the state’s regionally fragmented electoral landscape, the picture may appear all too incoherent. But the vote will in all probability make it more coherent in ways that may not be immediately discernible.

For the two national parties, the Congress and the BJP, the Maharashtra vote is not just the first big contest after the Lok Sabha election. It could impact their national strategies significantly. The Congress, having pulled off a more beneficial division of seats with the NCP, which actually got more seats in the 2004 assembly, is seeking a sense of its potential to attain its old single-party dominance. In recent months, the party debated going it alone in Maharashtra, for reasons more than just putting the NCP on notice. Enthused by the gains in UP, and having added to its ranks in Maharashtra with inductions from other parties, the Congress will analyse its performance for how to calibrate relations with electoral partners. The BJP, struggling to come to terms with the means and strategy needed for a post-Lok Sabha poll rescue, would perhaps see the verdict as a signal on how to balance relations between the states and its national leadership.

... contd.