It will be 12 days on Tuesday since the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra scored a surprisingly easy victory in the assembly elections and were assured of a third straight term in power. But all those who were mightily relieved that the polls did not throw up a hung assembly and hoped that the clear verdict would energise the two parties to make a fresh beginning, should be doing a serious rethink now. The alliance partners have been negotiating and squabbling over the number and nature of ministries they think they deserve in the new government and have not been able to come to an agreement despite the need to form a government before the deadline of November 4.

Irrespective of whether they manage to seal a deal on Tuesday, or settle to swear in just Ashok Chavan and Chhagan Bhujbal as chief minister and his deputy to beat the deadline and continue to fight for the loaves of office, the delay has managed to damage the new dispensation’s image. It has also hinted at a key underlying cause for the poor governance record of the alliance over the last 10 years: their excessive focus on coming to power, holding on to it and making the most of those years in office.

At the crux of the present stalemate is the improved performance of the Congress and the higher number of seats it has won, and the corresponding fall in the numbers of the NCP. When the two parties came together to form their first alliance government in 1999, both got 21 ministries each, with Congress getting the post of CM. Although the Congress had then won significantly more seats than the NCP, it agreed to share the ministries equally based on the same formula as the predecessor Shiv Sena-BJP alliance because the alliance was being cobbled together in a hurry after the polls and there was also a fear that the newly formed NCP could go with the Sena and BJP and keep the Congress out of power.

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