Will emergence of regional parties cause hung House in MP?

Spokesmen for both the BJP and Congress, however, strongly deny any possibility and maintain that the two-party system will continue to exist in the state even after the assembly elections.

The State BJP Spokesman Uma Shankar Gupta and his Congress counterpart Manak Agarwal both claimed that their respective parties would succeed in forming the next government in the state.

The two said that whatever anyone else might say, barring Congress and BJP, no other political party would have any significant influence in the state.

Disputing claims of Congress Bahujan Samaj Party has fielded candidates in all the 230 assembly constituencies, Samajwadi party in 225 constituencies, Uma Bharti’s Bharatiya Janshakti Party in around 215 constituencies and Samanata Dal in 75 constitutencies.

Political experts feel that the emergence of the regional parties and Bharti’s determination to defeat the BJP may lead to the end of polarisation among voters between the Congress and the BJP.

Election Analyst D S Tiwari said that it would not be right to take lightly the Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party which had come to power in Uttar Pradesh on the basis of social engineering.

The role of Purohit, who was in the Military Intelligence, in the Nanded blast is still being probed with one of the prime accused still at large.

According to an accused in the Nanded case, one person identified as Mithun Chakravarthy had provided them with training on how to make bombs.

A witness in the Nanded case had also said that during a camp organised by the Bajrang Dal in the year 2000, he had seen two senior retired Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers and two former defence personnel providing training in firing guns.

In the Malegaon probe, a team from the ATS visited the Shabridham ashram in Bardoli which is run by one Swami Ashimanand last week and questioned some of its members, officials there said.

The ATS is also considering the possibility of charging the nine arrested accused in the Malegaon case under sections of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

The nine are presently charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for murder and conspiracy, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Indian Explosives Act.

Five of the arrested accused will be produced before a Nashik court.