They say in the BJP that it is better to leave one’s fate to the high command. The party’s first 195 of the Lok Sabha line-up consolidates this popular sentiment in the BJP’s rank and file. Aspirants and sitting MPs from Maharashtra have a strong feeling that their own state would be no different when it comes to surprises. Many state-level leaders, who are to be the candidates for the general elections, have kept mum about their prospects. Those tipped to be dropped have already accepted their fate. But there are some who still think that the party will apply the yardstick differently while selecting the nominees in Maharashtra. Being the boss of the alliance, the BJP’s opinion will also count dearly in the selection of the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar) candidates, because it is the state from where the NDA/BJP must win more than forty seats if it were to gather the highest ever number in the Lok Sabha. PM Narendra Modi has projected the NDA’s figure to be beyond 400, with the BJP’s share not less than 370. 

While the first list included mostly two-party states, where the BJP does not have pre-poll alliances, Maharashtra’s politics, made trickier with the participation of ‘two full (the BJP and Congress) and four halves (the Sena and NCP splinters)’, may delay the ticket announcements a bit. Neither the NDA nor MVA have shown any hurry. It seems they are still assessing each other in view of so many politically-motivated things happening in the state. People in the know say that only the last-minute ‘ironing’ needs to be done before making their respective lists public. Looking at the conditions it has proposed for a pact, the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi seems disinterested in joining the MVA, though it is pre-poll friends with the Sena (UBT). It seems Prakash Ambedkar-led VBA has gone into overdrive to project his party as an alternative to the Opposition combine’s weakest partners, the Congress and NCP (Sharad Pawar). VBA is likely to be accused of being the BJP’s Team ‘B’ if it doesn’t go with the MVA.