Congress-NCP retains power in M'rashtra

The Cong-NCP alliance defeated Shiv Sena-BJP. The EC said the incumbents won 141 seats, the challengers 117 seats.

The Congress-NCP alliance defeated the Shiv Sena-BJP in the Maharashtra assembly polls. The Election Commission on Saturday said the incumbents won 141 seats, the challengers 117 seats, with the remainder of the 288 seats going to smaller parties and independents. The big question now: Who’ll be the state’s next Chief Minister?

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It was an emotional day of vote-counting for the dramatis personae. BJP’s strategist Pramod Mahajan, for whom a lot was riding on these elections, cloistered himself with three TV sets, only to re-emerge for his late afternoon press conference. Sena tiger Bal Thackeray and his cubs Uddhav and Raj kept a low profile.

Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, who’d been nervous about winning the Sholapur seat, verged on weeping when he faced the TV cameras. Union Minister Sharad Pawar, seeing that his party was on the way to being the new Assembly’s single largest, discovered a new mix of humility and sarcasm: “Had Balasaheb addressed more meetings, the Shiv Sena-BJP would have lost more seats,” he quipped.

The NCP’s metamorphosis into the alliance’s senior partner (their tally includes the seat won by the Athwale faction of the RPI) was the day’s big surprise: they won 71 seats, the Congress 69. In addition, other winners included five NCP rebels, three Congress rebels and two BJP rebels. These prodigals are expected to return home.