At least 50 or thereabouts out of these will have limited flexibility. Sharad Pawar’s NCP, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool and Naidu’s TDP will see a future downside in aligning with the BJP, but at a pinch they could. It will be slightly more complicated for Naveen Patnaik’s BJD and TDP to go with the UPA as the Congress is their main rival in their power bases. This will further restrict the overall mobility within this decisive group of 150.

The key, therefore, will be the 100 or so who could move either way — and that is where the real complications will come. If the Left decides to support a Congress coalition, for example, the numbers they bring will be netted off against Mamata Banerjee, since she will most certainly move out. Similarly, even if the Third Front does brilliantly, there will be no way they could get the numbers from other “secular” parties like the SP, DMK and Trinamool, as they cannot co-exist with the BSP, AIADMK and Left, respectively their mortal enemies. So any coalition will get only one of each of these sets of rivals. This will diminish the net numerical power of all these parties.

Now we come to our final set of certainties. First, whichever coalition comes to power, Ramadoss, Paswan, Kumaraswamy (junior Gowda) and Ajit Singh will be in its cabinet. These fortunate men represent the phenomenon of total ideological fungibility, as they will share power with any of the three possible combinations. They will also pretty much have their pick of what can only be described as ATM ministries. Each of these will have just a few seats, but total political mobility.

... contd.