One thing is clear in next month's election to Maharashtra assembly that none of the major contesting parties are going to get a majority on their own. Neither the Congress nor the NCP can dream of getting the requisite number of seats to stake claim to form the government. So is the position of the BJP and the Shiv Sena; neither of them is in a position to form the government on their own. Therefore, the Congress-NCP alliance on the one hand and the BJP- Shiv Sena tie up on the other was inevitable and logical and it has happened that way. The coalition politics has, after all, dominated Maharashtra for past 15 years.

After YSR who? This question haunts the central leadership of the Congress Party and Sonia Gandhi. It is not an easy task to fill the void created by untimely death of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Y S Rajshekhar Reddy, in a helicopter crash. He was the Congress party's first Chief Minister in four decades to seek vote in his own name and win an election. More importantly, he managed to acquire that stature without getting the central leadership suspicious of his growing size. Indeed, YSR was of the most fascinating and powerful political figures to have risen in the past decades.

The Congress faced worst political crisis following its rout in the post Emergency General Elections. That was the year 1977. Indira Gandhi faced the brunt of the attack and the crisis led to the split in the Congress in January 1979. The BJP too faced its worst crisis in the wake of May, 2009 poll but it was not a rout as the Congress had suffered 32 years ago. Yet, the intra-party tussle in the saffron party assumed serious proposition as never before witnessed. Will the BJP too split or overcome the ongoing calamity? The chances of a vertical split appear remote but how the BJP will ward off the crisis is yet to be seen.

The thought itself is frightening. Will the mounting backlog of court cases lead the common man to take the law into his own hand? This question was posed by President Pratibha Patil at a national seminar on judicial reforms in February, last year. She had been quoted as saying: "This agonizing delay has rendered the common man's knock on the doors of justice a frustrating experience. This has ominous portents. We cannot allow a situation where the common man is tempted to take the law into his own hand and subscribe to the deviant culture of lynch mob". Indeed, there has been great resentment in the people in delay in dispensation of justice.

An innocuous advisory of the Rajasthan government, urging media-both electronic and print -not to use royal tiles would have gone unnoticed but for an almost similar directive issued by the AICC to its party men. The state Directorate of Public Relations had suggested that media should desist from using appendages or prefixes such as 'Raja', 'Maharaja', 'Maharani' and 'Riyasat'. The immediate provocation of advisory is not known. Generally former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has been referred as "Maharani" by the people and her rivals in the Congress party. But she was defeated in 2008 assembly elections.

In the wake of the BJP's defeat in 2004 Lok Saba election, a 'chintan baithak" was held in Goa. The issue of 'Hindutva' came up for discussion, almost in the same way, as it figured in the recent meeting of the BJP's National Executive in Delhi. In the Goa conclave, Atal Behari Vajpayee, whose six-year-old government was ousted, was present but he did not agree with many leaders inside the party and in the Sangh Parivar attributing the election defeat to what they perceived as BJP's abandonment of 'Hindutva'. Vajpayee, however, did not intervene.

A confidential analysis of its poll debacle made by the CPI-M has revealed that the electoral reverses suffered by the Left parties in their traditional bastions of West Bengal and Kerala may affect the Communist movement in the whole country. The analysis has come to the conclusion that both at organisational and administrative levels, serious corrections are required otherwise the Left parties' growth and movement, besides their national importance, would be affected in a consideration proportion. The 2009 elections saw the Left parties' tally dip to 15 out of 42 in West Bengal and four of 20 in Kerala, though the Marxists won both the seats in Tripura. In 2004 general election, the CPI-M-led Left Front had won 35 seats in West Bengal and 19 in Kerala.

The 15th Lok Sabha marks a generational change. Hope, change, youth -these are grand words being used to describe the outcome of Elections 2009. The new look Lok Sabha has 58 first-time MPs under the age of 40, and the average age of Mohan Singh's cabinet has fallen from 66 to 57. The rise of youth power in Indian politics calls for celebration as well as introspection. Also, the youth- dominated Parliament and the government have aroused high expectations. The least the people expect is smooth functioning of Parliament unlike earlier houses which conducted less business and created more noise. The highlights of 13th and 14th Lok Sabhas were repeated disruption and hours lost in adjournments of the house for days in succession. On few occasions even budgets were passed without discussion. Crores of Tax-payers money went down the drain.