Will Congress ally with NCP, is the question

As Maharashtra prepares to face the next Assembly polls, the partners in the ruling UPA and Democratic Front ? the Congress and the NCP ? are locked in a love-hate relationship.

Eventually, it appears that a pre-poll alliance between the two parties is likely, given that they share power at the Centre and in the state. But for now, leaders from both sides are flexing their muscles.

In the 2004 elections, the Congress had contested 166 out of the 288 seats and won 69, while the NCP had contested 122 and won 71. After Narayan Rane broke ranks with the Shiv Sena and joined the Congress in 2005, the party increased its tally to 75.

A few months ago, the NCP had projected Sharad Pawar as the prime ministerial candidate. However, after the Lok Sabha poll results, the NCP is visibly on the backfoot in its negotiations with a newly resurgent Congress.

* Union minister for heavy industries Vilasrao Deshmukh has emerged as one of the prominent Congress leaders opposing a pre-poll alliance with the NCP. Deshmukh was removed as chief minister after the 26/11 terror attacks on Mumbai; though he has been rehabilitated at the Centre as a Union minister, he continues to have high stakes in the state.

Deshmukh says he is against a Congress-NCP pact because votes get transferred from the Congress to the NCP but not vice versa.

* Former Union minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil is another advocate of the Congress going solo. Patil, who controls an empire of cooperative institutions in Ahmednagar district, has been in political wilderness after his bastion, Kopargaon, was renamed as Shirdi and made a reserved constituency.

Having joined the Shiv Sena and returned five years ago, Patil is now eager to show that his heart beats for the Congress.

* Manikrao Thakre was appointed state Congress chief after his predecessor and Deshmukh?s bete noire Prabha Rau was shifted out as governor of Himachal Pradesh. Thakre was in the Deshmukh camp at that time, but has been trying to come out of the latter?s shadow since.

Thakre is cautious in his statements about the Congress-NCP alliance and says the decision would be taken by the high command.

* Chief minister Ashok Chavan and industries minister Narayan Rane, are circumspect on the coalition question as well. Rane was a bitter critic of Deshmukh and of his successor Chavan, but has mended some fences since. Chavan and Rane have not come out on the side of their colleagues who are demanding that the Congress dump the NCP.

* In the NCP, Sharad Pawar has the last word and he has cautioned his cadres to lie low. His declaration that the Bandra-Worli sealink be named after Rajiv Gandhi was seen as a conciliatory gesture to the Congress provoked by the jolt his own ambitions and his party registered in the LS polls.

* Civil aviation minister Praful Patel leads the NCP pack in talks with the Congress. Patel is known to have cordial relations with leaders in both parties and appears to be in favour of alliance.

* State NCP chief RR Patil has been as aggressive as Deshmukh from the other side and has claimed that the NCP has grown in strength across the state and deserves a better deal. However, after the Lok Sabha results, Patil is keeping a low profile. He says senior leaders in Delhi would take a decision on the alliance.

* Deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal, too, has been aggressively warning the Congress not to take NCP for granted. He has pointed out that the NCP wanted to prevent the division of the ?secular? votes. But, if the terms of the alliance are not dignified, he insists the NCP has enough strength to fight on its own.