All out war in Maharashtra

BJP-SENA alliance collapses, NCP-Congress tie-up also breaks. It’s official. 25 years-old BJP-Shiv Sena alliance is over. “With a heavy heart, we have broken away from alliance,” says BJP. Parleys between both parties on seat sharing were on for long time but it did not work out. BJP says Sena was too greedy. BJP says sena had its eyes on chief minister’s chair and they did not care about smaller parties. 

It appears that relation between both the parties soured beyond redemption. This might affect the outcome in Maharashtra. This will throw some big surprises as well as opportunities in the pre and post poll scenario. 

If one ponders over the reasons for collapse of alliance, merely failure of seat sharing doesn’t look like the one big reason. To understand this, one ought to go little deeper. Let’s try to decipher some reasons which are apparent.

One, Shiv Sena won 18 seats but got just one ministerial berth at the Centre. This made Sena cadre little uneasy.

Two, Sena had made its view public when Modi’s name was not shortlisted for the post of Prime Minister. Samna made it preferences clear in its September 9, 2012 edition of Samna paper that they prefer Sushma over Modi. Uddhav, too, repeated this many times. Modi didn’t like this.

Third, after Gopinath Munde’s death Uddhav was trying to dominate the proceedings in Maharashtra, which BJP top brass did not like.

Fourth, Modi doesn’t like to be dictated when he has got such a great majority in the Lok Sabha polls. Rather he would like to dominate relationship.

In the dramatic turnaround, NCP has also decided to break away from Congress. NCP knows that congress was riddled with innumerable scams. Holding their hands and contest elections would not help them in polls.  Congress can hope against hope to do well in elections, but there is no reason to believe this. All four parties will go to polls alone. It’s all out war out there.