Maharashtra is a prestigious state as it has 48 Lok Sabha and 288 Assembly seats. Mumbai is the financial capital of the country.

For the last 10 years, the fight has been between the Congress-NCP combine and Sena-BJP front with the smaller parties on the fringe. The mood is upbeat in the ruling Congress NCP after the 2009 Lok Sabha poll outcome.

Political equations have changed in the state in the last five years. The Congress is arrogant; the NCP is apprehensive; the BJP is demoralised, and the Shiv Sena has split. Raj Thackeray, who formed his own outfit, Maharashtra Navnirman Samithi after his expulsion, has harmed the parent party in the Lok Sabha polls. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the MNS did not win a single seat but got 10 lakhs votes which damaged the Sena primarily. The ambitious MNS is now planning to contest 100 Assembly seats and is also open to alliances with smaller groups. The battle lines are drawn now with Bal Thackeray throwing his weight behind son Uddhav. It is a do -or -die battle for Balasaheb as he is getting older.

The Dalit politics is also in shambles. The Ambedkarite movement is in a bad shape. All the three leaders of Republican parties - Ramdas Athawale of Republican Party of India (RPI), Dr Rajendra Gawai, son of Kerala governor R S Gawai, and Prakash Ambedkar - were defeated in the Lok Sabha polls.

The relations between the Sena and the BJP are strained after the BJP master strategist Pramod Mahajan's death. Within the BJP, all is not well as differences have cropped up between the BJP state chief Nitin Gadkari and the General Secretary Gopinath Munde. The BJP has no leader of stature. Moreover, there is an atmosphere of gloom in the BJP in view of the crisis at the national level. Despite the rumblings at the top level, the two parties have quietly worked out an understanding to contest the Assembly polls. Sena will fight 177 of the 288 seats while the BJP would fight the rest.

What is the mood in the ruling combine? The alliance has to get 145 seats. The two parties are in advantageous position but barely so because of the anti- incumbency. The names of Sonia and Manmohan Singh sell in Maharashtra. The opposition is in disarray. The Congress is flexing its muscles after its better showing in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. Based on that it wants to contest more Assembly seats while the NCP is not agreeable to this formula. The trust between the two partners had never been good despite sharing power for the last decade.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar continues to remain the supreme leader of the party while there is a fight for the second slot among Ajit Pawar, Chaggan Bhujbal and R.R. Patil. Pawar too had lost some of his close lieutenants like Datta Mehge due to internal power struggle. For him it is a do-or-die battle. If his party loses, his flock will desert him. The best case scenario for Pawar is to improve the NCP performance or at least keep it status quo to survive. After all, the NCP has three ministers at the Centre and shares power in the state. The NCP has become a national party and shared power in other states like Goa and Meghalaya.

Congress has kept up the suspense over the fate of its alliance with the NCP. It is asking the NCP to acknowledge the changed ground realities after the 2009 polls in which the Congress won 17 seats to NCP's seven in Maharashtra. It wants the 2009 assembly election formula to reflect this.

While the Sena and the BJP have finalised their poll alliance, many small parties also have cobbled up a Third Front in which around 20 parties and factions have joined. They have decided to contest all the 288 seats in the state. The Congress is yet to take the basic decision of an alliance with the NCP and seat sharing. According to a pre- poll survey conducted by the NCP, there is likely to be a close fight between the Congress- NCP combine and the Sena BJP front. This is strengthened by the 2009 Lok Sabha poll results where the Congress-NCP polled only 3.72 per cent votes more than the Sena-BJP combine. Going it alone may be disastrous for both the NCP and Congress as even together they are barely ahead.

Pawar is clear on two things. The first is that only an alliance will help the ruling combine to come back to power. The second is that he is not ready for a merger which is being talked about by some Congress leaders like Digvijay Singh. Both Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar are reconciled to an alliance but their personal chemistry is not very good. Both know that they need each other. Both leaders smell power and that is why it is safe to predict that the alliance will continue and it will be a give-and-take seat sharing. (IPA Service)