Every election has its dramatis personae. In Maharashtra, it is not Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi but state leaders who crowd the “Maha story” this time.

Hardly anybody mentions the PM or Gandhi unless one raises it specifically. The sons of the soil are the ones who dominate the conversations.

There is the CM, Eknath Shinde, of the Shiv Sena who is being hailed because of the Mukhya Mantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana. Shinde is also slowly carving out a niche for himself as a Maratha leader. Then there is Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP whose authority seems to have been somewhat restored of late thanks to the intervention of the RSS.

The other Deputy CM, Ajit Pawar, is fighting with his back to the wall. He has now sent signals that he does not want senior BJP leaders such as Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath to campaign in the constituencies allotted to his party as he does not want their rhetoric, calculated to polarise, to antagonise Muslims. He has also told his supporters not to criticise Sharad Pawar personally as it creates sympathy for his uncle.

On the other side is Uddhav Thackeray who is fighting to be recognised by people as the real Shiv Sena. There is goodwill for him but not quite at the level it was during the Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress has chosen to fight even more of a localised election with different leaders sticking to their regions.

In the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) camp, all eyes are on what new notes the maestro of the orchestra, Sharad Pawar, may strike. He played the sympathy card in Baramati, where Ajit is contesting, when he dropped hints about this being his last election and, in an interview to The Indian Express, admitted that the MVA had lost some of its advantage due to the Mahayuti’s welfare schemes.

There are 288 separate battles being waged in Maharashtra today, influenced by caste, candidate, religion, farmers’ angst about crop prices, inflation, and multiple local issues that kick in during an Assembly poll.

A visit to Marathwada showed that at the heart of the election lies the long-running battle between Pawar and Fadnavis. It has been on since 2014 when the BJP emerged as the single-largest party with 122 seats and Fadnavis went on to become CM. He tried to win over Maratha support to augment the BJP’s following among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) by playing the reservation card.

Fadnavis brought Ajit Pawar over to his side in 2019, but Ajit went back to his uncle in a few days — though he finally broke the NCP in 2023 — introducing a personal element to the rivalry.

Last year, Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange Patil again upped the ante on the Maratha quota demand but, significantly, demanded that reservation be given from the OBC share. In the process, he made Fadnavis the target of his attacks, painting him as someone opposed to the community’s interests.

While there could be Maratha consolidation for the MVA thanks to Jarange Patil’s sudden move to “withdraw” his candidates — he had asked them to file their nominations only days earlier — the Mahayuti hopes women will become a countervailing force as there is a possibility of women cutting across caste and other divides veering towards it because of the Ladki Bahin Yojana.

In the village of Pokhri on the outskirts of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad), a dozen women — most of them were Dalits, either neo-Buddhists or Matangs — said they voted for the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, apprehensive that reservation for the Scheduled Castes (SCs) might end and “we also thought that Rahul Gandhi may bring down rising prices if he comes to power”. But this time, “we will vote for our brother Eknath Shinde”, one of them declared, as “he put money in our hands”. This, the women said, was something they had not even asked for and “we know he will do more” if he returns to power.

The dilemma of the sole Maratha woman in the group was palpable. The message from Jarange Patil was clear: defeat the BJP. And yet, she too has got money in her hands. The following day, this dilemma was apparent again at a Fadnavis rally in the heart of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, where a group of Maratha women, most of them domestic workers, were present to listen to the Deputy CM and make up their minds.

The more educated women have tended to criticise the “fiscally imprudent” scheme, saying it will make women dependent on doles and hardly offset the effects of inflation. But the women in Pokhri were excited to get money in their hands. One of them, a graduate, will now prepare for a selection board exam; of the not-so-educated, one had purchased a vegetable cart and sells vegetables in the neighbourhood to augment her income and others had used the money for household expenses. Most importantly, it made them feel important and was going to determine their voting choices that were going to be different from those of their husbands.

Around 100 km away in Antarwali Sarathi in Jalna district, surrounded by fields of dragon fruit, Jarange Patil met people on the verandah of the village sarpanch’s house.

Though he evaded questions about who would benefit from his decision to not back any candidate, people in the region were clear about the message. The activist, they said, was asking them to support the MVA. Had he backed independent Maratha candidates, they would have cut into the Maratha vote, helping the Mahayuti. The Maratha-Muslim-Dalit axis that the MVA is forging has been a winning one for the Congress and the NCP in the past.

But some said that Jarange Patil might help Shinde, also a Maratha, in some constituencies as he has a soft corner for the CM. His ire is not directed against Shinde or even Ajit Pawar. For him, it is Fadnavis who is the villain of the piece.

I did not meet a single Maratha who did not endorse the demand for reservation for the community, even though it is powerful in many ways and owns sugar cooperatives, education institutions, and cooperative banks.

The reservation demand is about the reassertion of Maratha power in a state that they used to rule under the Congress and the NCP. Local Marathas see Jarange Patil as being “close to Sharad Pawar” though the activist himself does not admit anything of the sort. Some even go to the extent of saying, “Pawar, Shinde, and Jarange are one.”

Who goes where after the elections is anybody’s guess, except that “the BJP and the Congress will stay where they are”. Several people in the region expect a post-poll muddle. “Is baar toh khichdi pakne wali hai (This time, it will be a ‘khichdi’ after the elections),” says one.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 11 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)