Independents likely to do business in a hung House

50% voter turnout recorded in Maharashtra

Around 50 per cent of the electorate cast its vote in Maharashtra and pollsters confessed confusion about the outcome but both the Congress-led Democratic Front and the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliances claimed they would be the ones getting a majority in the Assembly elections in the state that concluded on Wednesday.

"The Congress-led Democratic Front will come to power once again in the state," Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said after exercising his vote in Solapur.

After casting his vote in Baramati, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar too expressed confidence that the ruling alliance would retain power in the state.

But the real tug war was expected to be for the support of the independents and it was generally assumed that in this department the Democratic Front would be better off than the BJP-Sena alliance.

Observers of Maharashtra politics said in an election as close as this one, of the likes Maharashtra had never seen, three points were likely to stand out - the margins of victory would be small, hampering victory and defeat predictions; the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) would make an unexpected dent in Maharashtra politics; and the size and profile of the new force of independents would make it a potent new factor.

BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan said the saffron alliance would get a good response from the farmers and would form the government without taking the help of anyone else including the independents.

But these could be brave last words. Congress leaders envisage damage to their ranks by the BSP, and are banking on independents to compensate this loss.

Although the BJP-Sena has seen some rebellion with candidates standing as independents in protest, these rebels are nowhere as large as the force of Congress rebels.

But the size and nature of independents could create problems and if not handled properly, could dictate the choice of the chief minister. Several independents have contested the election as a protest against Shinde.

If they sense that the Congress is unable to form a government without their support, they might just let the Congress central leadership know that the choice of the chief minister will also be their's.

The rebels this time are also different in nature than the ones in the last House. Shinde had a minister from among the seven or eight independents in the Assembly. He could "manage" them by making one of them "" H Patil""a minister of Cabinet rank.

But this time, the rebels are likely to argue that not only would their victory represent a defeat of the Congress but also a vindication of their personal standing in their constituency. They are expected to be more aggressive and more assertive as a group.

This is why, if Shinde is unable to win the rebels and the Democratic Front is able to cobble together between 120 and 130 seats in a 288-member House, it is possible that a person might be sought as the chief minister who will have a standing that surpasses Shinde's. It could be d Pawar or a nominee of his.

The BJP-Sena, that is banking on anti-incumbency to register a victory, admits that Pawar's tactics were clever - he changed a number of MLAs and reshuffled many faces.

As anti-incumbency at the level of state politics is associated with faces, the replacement of sitting candidates with new ones in itself could help the Congress-NCP.

For the moment, the consensus is that if neither alliance gets below 125 seats, it will be hard for a stable government to be formed in Maharashtra.