Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan at a press conference (Press Trust of India photo)
As two old alliances came apart over seat-sharing on one dramatic Thursday in Maharashtra, the state's chief minister Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress questioned the timing.
"The NCP has decided to end our alliance within an hour of the BJP ending its alliance with the Shiv Sena. Maybe they've found new friends. We may find out in three or four days who these friends are," Mr Chavan said.
There has been much speculation that Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party or NCP - which was the Congress' ally for 15 years till it announced a split yesterday - has been in talks with the BJP.
(Read)The NCP has denied this. "This is an old record the Congress is playing. Sometimes they say we are with the Sena, sometimes the BJP. We have heard this for 15 years," NCP leader Nawab Malik told NDTV.
Maharashtra BJP chief Devendra Fadnavis said "we won't ally with NCP at any cost."
Assembly elections will be held in Maharashtra on October 15. The splits announced yesterday mean it will be a four-cornered contest, with Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or MNS as the fifth angle.
The twist to the tale in a state that has voted for one or the other major alliance for the last 16 years has thrown up the distinct possibility of a hung Assembly, with no party getting a clear majority. Mr Chavan is alluding to post-election re-alignments.
Like the NCP, it was the BJP that walked out of its 25-year-old partnership with the Sena yesterday. With "a heavy heart," BJP leaders said.
(Read)The BJP's Rajiv Pratap Rudy explained that his party tried to salvage the alliance, but time was running out. "Hope there will be no bitterness. The objective is to unseat the NCP and the Congress," he said.
The Shiv Sena is bitter but chose it's words carefully. "It's unfortunate that the 25-year-old alliance didn't last... The Shiv Sena tried to hold on to the alliance till the very end... Those who inherited the alliance didn't want to yield a few seats," it said today in its newspaper Saamna.
The break-ups will affect equations in Parliament too. The NCP was part of the Congress-led UPA. The Sena is expected to pull out its 18 MPs from the BJP-led NDA and withdraw its one union minister.