With a cumulonimbus hovering above the Congress’s head, the thinnest of silver linings would be a welcome sight for beleaguered partymen. And that is what the political skies in Maharashtra have just provided. The Congress has swept the by-elections that were held on January 21 in the western state, winning all the three assembly as well as one Lok Sabha seats. The reason for cheer within the Congress ranks is more than just bagging these seats, it is the shift in the political centre of gravity; the party is now the single largest political party in Maharashtra, one seat ahead of the NCP’s total of 71. Two things are suggested by this slender lead. One, the victories have provided the Congress with a psychological — not to mention, a numerical — advantage at a time when it was finding it difficult to gain some elbow room within the Congress-NCP alliance ruling the state. Two, the Narayan Rane experiment has worked.
In a sense, the Maharashtra bypoll results are the happy antithesis of what has happened with another Congress coalition government in another state. While the see-saw in Karnataka now finds the Congress up in the air, with these results, the party in Maharashtra has managed to keep the increasingly restless Sharad Pawar to still play the coalition game. With the Shiv Sena dribbling away — and the Raj Thackeray branch of the family unit yet to manifest itself in anyway — it is Mr Pawar’s NCP that has been doing everything it can to open up and then occupy the anti-Congress space. This manoeuvre has been possible (and moderately successful) only because the NCP saw its alliance with the Congress from a position of relative advantage.
With the clear signal that the Congress is still very much an equal partner — if not ‘a little more’ with the one-seat lead — Mr Pawar may hold his plans of ‘doing a BSP’ for the time being. The results are a silver lining for the Congress in Delhi. But for the state unit, becoming the largest party in the state after 15 months of coming to power with the NCP, it is a precious moment.
{{/usCountry}}With the clear signal that the Congress is still very much an equal partner — if not ‘a little more’ with the one-seat lead — Mr Pawar may hold his plans of ‘doing a BSP’ for the time being. The results are a silver lining for the Congress in Delhi. But for the state unit, becoming the largest party in the state after 15 months of coming to power with the NCP, it is a precious moment.
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