Stakes are high in Maharashtra

While three states will go to the polls next month to elect new state Assemblies, it will be the Maharashtra results that will be avidly watched all over the country — particularly by the national parties that are in the fray. The stakes are huge in terms of psychological repercussions on various national parties, particularly the Congress after it came out with flying colours in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. The Congress is also the ruling party in Maharashtra in alliance with Mr Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, and the state has been a traditional Congress bastion, except for one five-year term when a BJP-Sena alliance was in power. The state, one of India’s richest, has also traditionally been one of the principal sources of fundraising for the ruling party, and thus defeat here is likely to hit it very hard. The fortunes of both the NCP as well as the BJP-Sena combine are in the melting pot. For the first time in its history in the state, the BJP is ridden with the kind of factionalism which used to plague the Congress. Once-disciplined party workers in Raigad and Nagpur are busy forming their own parties in order to fight “official” Shiv Sena candidates. In Ghatkopar (East), for instance, where late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan’s daughter Ms Poonam is the party candidate, the BJP leadership faces accusations that it had “bartered away” Ghughar, a party fiefdom for decades, to the Sena so that it could secure the seat for Ms Mahajan. The Sena-BJP alliance is expected to lose some crucial numbers because of this. The alliance’s carefully-laid plans to neutralise the Raj Thackeray factor will be in disarray due to this infighting. The Sena has for some time been trying desperately to convince middle–class voters that supporting Raj’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena will only divide the Marathi manoos vote to the advantage of the Congress. It is also likely that the parting of ways between the RPI and the Congress will neutralise the support that the Congress got from the MNS. For the first time, the Congress appears to have angered a section of dalits because of the hamhanded way in which it evicted dalit leader Mr Ramdas Athavle from his bungalow in New Delhi last week. This is being interpreted in certain circles in Maharashtra as an anti-dalit move as Mr Athwale had of late distanced himself from the Congress. The RPI is expected to question why action was taken against Mr Athawle when several other former MPs continue to occupy official quarters for longer periods. Mr Sharad Pawar’s political future is also in the melting pot, particularly after his party put up a poor showing in the Lok Sabha election. If it continues to perform badly in this Assembly election it will greatly weaken his position at the Centre, and the voices demanding a merger of the NCP with the Congress are likely to grow louder. The key reason which prompted Mr Pawar to form the NCP over a decade ago was his allergy at that time to the question of Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, something he says now is no longer an issue. Then why, his critics are bound to ask, is there any need to maintain the NCP’s separate existence?