The Narendra Modi-propelled BJP appeared to be ahead of all other major political parties on Tuesday, as Maharashtra prepared to go to most keenly contested Assembly polls, an electoral process that promises to either end a coalition era or change the very complexion of the coalition politics being witnessed in the State during the past two decades.
Though there are clear pointers to suggest that the BJP will end up the single largest political party in the polls, there is still uncertainty in many quarters as to whether the Modi-led party will touch or cross the magic number of 145 seats in the 288-member Assembly.
If it succeeds in securing a majority of 145 seats in the Assembly, then the BJP will have ended a prolonged era of coalition politics that saw the Sena and BJP come together as an alliance in 1989 and later capture power in the State for the first time in 1995.
However, if the BJP fails to muster the magic number, it will have to work hard to sew up a fresh coalition with its erstwhile saffron alliance partner, Shiv Sena, or look for new allies to make up for the numbers required for forming a Government in the State. The party will have a tough task to accomplish either of the post-poll options, given the most acrimonious campaign that the Sena carried out against it and the hostile relationship it enjoys with other major political parties.
On its part, the BJP — which is contesting the polls in alliance with four smaller parties — is confident of crossing the tally of 145 seats on its strength. Its State party president Devendra Fadnavis has repeatedly gone on record expressing confidence of a clear victory and saying that it would not need outside support to form a Government. Fadnavis’ confidence stems from the internal constituency-wise surveys done by the BJP in the recent days and the fact that two major opinion polls done by “The Week-Hansa” and “India Today-Cicero” have projected a tally of 154 seats and “125-144 seats” respectively. “We hope to do better than the two opinion polls,” a senior BJP leader said.
However, the four major parties — Shiv Sena, Congress, NCP and Raj Thackeray-led MNS — do not share the BJP’s opinion and they feel that the Modi-led party may not cross the 100 seat-mark.
The Shiv Sena, which will in all likelihood emerge as the second largest party in the polls, is hoping against hope that the BJP would not get the requisite numbers so that it can try its hand at forming a new coalition Government in alliance with the MNS and the NCP minus irrigation scam-tainted Ajit Pawar, whom it will not involve in the formation of a Government even in a worst-case scenario.
While the ruling Congress is resigned to its fate of sitting in the Opposition, the NCP and the MNS are looking forward to a hung Assembly, where they can play the role of king-markers.Estimates made by independent political observers suggest that the BJP might end up with a tally ranging from 90 to 100 seat, while the Sena might bag anywhere from 60 to 7o seats and that the three other major political contenders - Congress, NCP and MNS - will vie with one another for the third slot.
If the exercise of seat-projections has become complicated, it is because for the time in the history of Maharashtra, there will be four to five five-cornered contests.
The factors that have given rise to uncertainty in poll outcome include: the likely division in the tradition vote banks of the erstwhile Congress-NCP and Sena-BJP alliances, the most vituperative campaign carried out by all political parties against each other, the governance model of Gujarat and Modi-led NDA that the BJP harped on in the campaign, a spirited campaign by Modi against his opponents, an equally aggressive retaliation by all the non-BJP parties pilloried Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the polls and the extensive manner in which the BJP poached into other parties, particularly the Congress, and succeeded in wooing influential ticket seekers as its nominees in the polls.
Prominent among the candidates in the poll fray include former Chief Minister Prithiviraj Chavan, former Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and former Ministers RR Patil and Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP; Devendra Fadnavis, Eknath Khadse, Vinod Tawde and Pankaja Munde of the BJP; Subhash Desai, Suresh Jain and Deepak Kesarkar of Shiv Sena, former ministers Patangrao Kadam, Shivajirao Moghe and Rajendra Darda of Congress and Bala Nandgaonkar of the MNS.
There are 83 constituencies having more than 15 candidates and a constituency where there are more than 32 candidates.Though the coalition politics came to stay in Maharashtra in March 1995 when the Sena-BJP alliance Government rode to power in the State by unseating the then ruling party, the Congress, the period between 1978 and 1986 was a precursor to the emergence of coalition politics in Maharashtra.
Then with the Congress-Reddy (which later came to be known as Congress-Urs), Sharad Pawar broke away from the parent party with 44 MlAs and formed the first-ever coalition Government in 1978, in alliance with Janata Party and its allies PWP and RPI. The Pawar-headed Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) Government was the first-ever coalition Government to rule the State.
After a couple of failed coalition experiments, Pawar merged his then Congress (S) with the Congress (I) in 1986. The first stable coalition Government came into being in Maharashtra in 1995, when the Sena-BJP alliance took over the reins of the State and ruled it for four and half years, before seeking an early election in September-October 1999.
By then, a spilt in the Congress had led to the formation of the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In the first Assembly polls held in October 1999 after the split of the Indian National Congress (INC), the Congress won 75 in the 288-member Assembly, while the splinter group NCP won 58 seats. The BJP and Shiv Sena won 56 and 69 seats respectively. After the polls, the Congress and NCP came together and formed first Democratic Front (DF) Government.
The ruling Congress-NCP alliance was re-elected to power in 2004 and 2009. In essence, the Congress-NCP alliance has ruled the state for three consecutive terms from October 1999 to September-October 2014.
However, there was a dramatic split in both the ruling Congress-NCP and Opposition Sena-BJP alliance Governments in the run-up to the current Assembly polls over the sharing of seats. As a result, four or five cornered contests are being witnessed in all the 288 Assembly constituencies in the State.