The Maha Battle For Survival

Maharashtra Is The Big Prize. With Six Parties, Two Major Alliances, It Is Looking At A Never-before Assembly Poll That May Send Two Regional Formations Into Oblivion, Crown Two Other Kings And Have National Political Repercussions

- DHAVAL S. KULKARNI

FIRST, A REALITY CHECK. Since the Congress win in Maharashtra in 1990, the six assembly elections in the state in the past 30 years have not seen any party win a majority on its own, which means coalition governments have been the norm. The upcoming assembly election in India's commercial capital will be no different. Except that the state has seen three chief ministers and three governments in the past five years and splits in its two big regional parties, triggering unexpected political alignments and fragmenting the polity even further. Now, there are two major alliances in the fray. On one side is the ruling Mahayuti alliance, consisting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena, and the deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar's faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Taking them on is the INDIA bloc's MVA or the Maha Vikas Aghadi, which has the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), or SS(UBT), led by former CM Uddhav Thackeray, the NCP(SP) faction led by patriarch Sharad Pawar, the alliance's binding glue, and the Congress.