Many new cracks on Maharashtra’s political ground but above it, one question: Modi versus?

When the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra wound to an end in a rally at Mumbai’s Shivaji Park on March 17, those who were watching it closely noted two departures from the past. Rahul Gandhi walked up to the flaming torch set in the patch of green to pay his respects at the Bal Thackeray memorial in the Park’s premises. And when Uddhav Thackeray opened his speech, a word was conspicuously missing, it had been substituted. Instead of saying “My Hindu brothers, sisters, mothers…”, as he usually did, Uddhav said: “My patriotic brothers, sisters, mothers…”.

Congress and Sena, traditional rivals that have stared each other down across the state’s “secular vs communal” divide for nearly six decades, were acknowledging, ahead of this election, their changed compulsions in a reconstituted political context.

This dramatic reset since the last Lok Sabha election in 2019 ripples and echoes in Maharashtra’s political field — the cloak-and-dagger pulling down and putting together of governments and the split of two regional parties under the shadow of Central agencies ED-CBI and I-T, ending in two new alliances, of three parties each, on either side of the divide: The BJP plus Shinde Sena plus Ajit Pawar-led NCP versus Congress plus Shiv Sena-led by Uddhav Thackeray plus Sharad Pawar’s NCP.

The Indian Express travelled across a dozen constituencies in the Konkan and north Maharashtra belt, headed to polls later next month. All these were swept by the BJP-undivided Sena alliance in 2019, which posted a whopping 51.34 per cent vote share overall with 41 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats. How this arithmetic works out on June 4 will shape the national verdict.

But today, “Modi versus?” seems starkly inscribed into spatial reality.

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