As the campaign ends in Maharashtra, and voters get ready to choose, all political parties face a sharp and shared challenge, regardless of who loses and who wins.

In the first Assembly election held after the “tod phod” (splitting of parties), which took the main contenders from four to six, rearranged traditional alliances beyond recognition by bringing together unlikely partners, and in which the sheer number of candidates has touched new highs in several constituencies, many voters in Maharashtra this time appear unwilling to suspend disbelief.

They speak of a “dividation” on the rise, and of the growing irrelevance of “paksh” or party. Voter distrust of party politics seems to have a new edge. This erosion of trust will arguably influence the outcome of this election – but in a party-led representative democracy, it is also a warning bell in the long term that all political parties must heed.

In a journey through Vidarbha’s Nagpur, Bhandara, Gondia, Wardha, Amravati, Akola and Buldhana districts – including some of the most backward areas in a state of glaring regional inequalities – The Indian Express found that voter disillusion with parties and the resulting focus on candidates is making election choices more difficult to predict. Whether the localisation works for Congress and the alliance it leads, the Maha Vikas Aghadi, or for the BJP and its alliance, the Mahayuti – that is the question.

Outside a chai shop in village Bibi in Buldhana district, voters talk about the two issues that dominate conversations in Vidarbha – and also about why they won’t influence their choice in this election. One, the declining “bhaav” (price) of crops, mainly soybean and cotton, selling far below MSP amid “mehengai” or rising prices of farm inputs like fertiliser and labour and essential commodities like petrol, diesel, cooking oil, gas cylinder, with “GST” thrown in as a swear word. Two, unemployment or “berozgari”.

Sarjerao Nagre, primary school teacher, says: “We gave Modi our vote in 2014 with a lot of expectation but we feel let down by decisions like demonetisation. I came back to the Congress in 2019. There is also the tod phod (destruction of parties)… Earlier I would watch a Modi speech for a full hour, now I switch channels when he speaks.”

“Modi accused Ajit Pawar of corruption, then made him CM. We made him PM because we were unhappy with Congress, so why harp on the Congress?” asks Vishnu Kendre, sarpanch of village Pimpri Khandare.

In this election, however, despite their criticism of Modi, Nagre and Kendre say they will vote for the candidate of the BJP-led Mahayuti – because at least the Mahayuti candidate belongs to their caste group and is accessible to them in a scenario of unstable parties. The sitting MLA in the constituency has switched sides and, in the last five years, been part of governments of both the MVA and Mahayuti. “Now we will look at the candidate, not paksh (party). Who knows which party he joins after he wins”, they say. “23rd November ke aage dekhiye hota hai kya kya, kissi baat ki nahi hai koi guarantee (there will be no full stop, the political game will go on after the result),” says Kendre. For now, both political affiliation and political change are being recast as terms that apply to the MLA, not party.

The fact that the contest will go down to the local wire is visible not only in Bibi, but also in several constituencies in this belt. The splintering that has brought the candidate into focus and relegated the party has voter helplessness written on it. “Nothing is in our hands,” says Bhujang Padmukh, in village Faijalapur, Buldhana. “We look at the candidate, he looks at who can lure him.” “Khokhe lete hain, bhaag jaate hain (candidates take bribes and switch sides)”, says Sangeeta Wankhede.

In Vyala village about 15 km from Akola town, three young OBC farmers profess abiding support for Modi, but say that it will not affect their choice in this election because “oopar toh hai hi Modi”, he is ensconced at the Centre already. Prakash Bochare will vote for the Shinde Sena because its candidate is a relative; Kailash Bochare may vote for the Uddhav Sena candidate because “there is no candidate from my own caste in the fray”; and Kishore Pagdhune will vote to settle a past grudge against him.

In a close contest – the last indication of the relative positions of the two alliances came in the 2024 Lok Sabha result, since elections before that were held in a radically different political terrain – the two formations are neck and neck, Mahayuti at 42.73 per cent, MVA at 44.04 per cent in terms of vote share.

Both sides need an extra something to pull ahead of the other and to beat the fragmentation, and some say the RSS could play the game-changer for the BJP. In Nagpur, the Sangh headquarter, there is talk of a more active Sangh involvement in this election in response to the BJP’s Lok Sabha setback – the Dhule Lok Sabha result is cited as an “or else” warning, where Muslim consolidation in the Malegaon assembly segment is said to have defeated the BJP candidate who was leading in all the other five segments. And yet, especially in Nagpur, speculation also swirls about the “work to rule” mode of senior and influential BJP veteran Nitin Gadkari – due to inner party politics in which the name of his rival, and fellow Nagpurite, Devendra Fadnavis, figures prominently.

PM Modi’s slogan of “Ek hain toh safe hain” and CM Yogi’s “Batenge toh katenge” could be seen as BJP gambits to give Mahayuti the edge. Communal polarisation is indeed visible in this belt, across castes – even bringing together those in the OBC and Maratha categories that are otherwise pitted against each other in some, not all, parts of the state by the Maratha demand for reservation.

In village Atali of Buldhana, Mahadev Ghorpade, tea stall owner, OBC, speaks of “Hindu pe atyachar” and mentions Bangladesh. “Hindu ko Congress se bhi khatra hai (the Hindu is also imperilled by Congress because it is Muslim-leaning),” he says. Gajanan, MCom, also an OBC, says “Yeh Hinduon ka sthan hai, jo hum bolenge woh hona chahiye (this is a Hindu country, Hindu writ must run)”. And in Akola town, at the monthly Deshmukh Mahila Mandal dinner, a Maratha caste event, in a hotel, Jaishree Deshmukh, school principal, says: “BJP must cancel the Waqf Board and bring the UCC. We (Marathas) can ask for reservation later, first we need to save the country.”

And yet, in this state of Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar with a rich tradition of social reformers who spoke of emancipation and equality, home to saints of the Bhakti movement, attempts to consolidate a “Hindu” vote by pitting it against a Muslim Other, don’t always go smoothly.

Polarisation is also blunted by candidates’ to-and-fro between parties – in Amravati, they say that the Mahayuti candidate, who switched from the Congress, refrains from using the language of Hindu vs Muslim because the Muslim vote helped him to win. “Uttar Pradesh ka naara Maharashtra mein nahi hona chahiye (UP’s slogan must not be deployed in Maharashtra),” says Sarjerao Nagre of village Bibi. BJP ally Ajit Pawar and the party’s own Pankaja Munde, who have spoken against the communally polarising slogan, may be making a strategic intervention in a state where the communal divide cannot be counted on as an always-already thing.

The Ladki Bahin Yojana is being touted as the other game-changer for the BJP-led Mahayuti – it provides Rs 1,500 a month to women between 21 to 65 years, whose annual family income is less than Rs 2.5 lakh, at least 2.26 crore women are estimated to have benefited already through four instalments; Congress has promised to double the amount. But in many places in this belt, it comes up against a hard question: You are taking from us and giving back to us, taking much more and giving back much less, voters say.

In village Faijalapur in Buldhana, Sangeeta Wankhde says: “Rs 1,500 cannot buy me even one 15 litre can of edible oil, which cost Rs 1,300 earlier and has shot up now to Rs 2,200.” “Don’t give me money, just reduce the prices of things I need to live,” says Arpita Shahare, in a gathering of members of self-help groups in Mahalgaon village of Bhandara district.

Among Dalits, the anxiety of “Constitution/reservation in danger”, which played a role in the Lok Sabha election, lingers on, adding to issues like unemployment and farm distress. Educated sections of the community talk of the Court’s subclassification verdict and point to the threat of the “creamy layer” exclusion principle being applied to SCs. Sensing an opportunity in a fragmenting field, Prakash Ambedkar, whose Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi is a strong player in his homeground of Akola, also a BJP bastion, but swims in and out of focus in the contest for the Dalit vote elsewhere, predicts: “This time, regional players are in front, national players behind. Is baar khichdi (this time it will be a hung Assembly)”.

In an election in which trust in parties seems a dwindling thing, “Bharosa hai Congress pe (we trust Congress),” says Sheikh Ashik Raees, of Buldhana’s Atali village. But in Amravati’s Jamil Colony, in the home of Meraj Khan, businessman, support for Congress is tinged with barely concealed bitterness about the lack of options for Muslims. “Congress has done nothing for us either. But we have to live and work and move ahead,” says Sahib Husain Subedar. “In all of Maharashtra, the MVA has given only nine tickets to Muslims… Earlier we voted to defeat Uddhav Thackeray, now we vote to bring him to power,” Meraj Khan points to an election irony.