But unable to resolve seat sharing issues due to the intense pulls and pressures within the ruling front, the Maha Yuti, this key state with 48 Lok Sabha seats is proving to be a huge challenge with only a handful of candidates announced so far.

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The Maha Yuti mainly consists of the BJP, the Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) and the NCP (Ajit Pawar faction). Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who heads the ruling Shiv Sena, has not been able to accommodate several of the party MPs who deserted Uddhav Thackeray and joined Shinde’s camp.

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Shinde, who has announced only eight candidates so far, is under pressure from the BJP to drop a couple of candidates. He could not even announce the candidature of his own son and the sitting Lok Sabha member from Kalyan, Dr Shrikant Shinde, who will in all likelihood, be shifted to another constituency.

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The crux of the tussle lies in the fact that  the BJP is unwilling to leave more than 12 seats to Shinde’s Shiv Sena and no more than six seats to Ajit Pawar’s NCP for the simple reason that their own sitting MPs are facing anti-incumbency. Besides, the BJP does not want to make Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar more powerful in the state by giving them more winnable seats.

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Ajit Pawar has very little wiggle room. The OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal, who has changed parties  multiple times, switching from the Shiv Sena to the Congress to the NCP (Sharad Pawar) and now to Ajit Pawar’s NCP, is facing a corruption case in the courts. Besides, the Maratha Kranti Morcha has threatened to oppose Bhujbal in the election if he contests from the Nashik seat.

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It is also unclear yet how the BJP will accommodate the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena led by Raj Thackeray. Raj has had several meetings with the BJP leaders in Delhi but hasn't been able to agree on a deal.

Amit Shah, aka the BJP’s 'Chanakya’, has found Maharashtra difficult to crack, even though Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is executing his line in Maharashtra after engineering splits in the Shiv Sena and the NCP.

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Eknath Shinde has managed to give tickets to former Congress MLA Raju Parve from the Ramtek (SC) seat who joined the Shiv Sena recently. He has done the same for a host of new entrants from the Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena - Rahul Shewale, (Mumbai South Central), Sanjay Mandlik (Kolhapur), Sadashiv Lokhande (Shirdi -SC) Prataprao Jadhav (Buldhana) Hemant Patil (Hingoli) Srirang Barne (Mava) and Dhairyasheel Mane (Hatkanangale).

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Recently, Bollywood actor Govinda too joined Shinde's Shiv Sena, and Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra has been set up for a contest against the NCP supremo Sharad Pawar's daughter, Supriya Sule from Baramati.

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The state, with its 48 Lok Sabha seats, is the second-largest contributor to the lower house of Parliament after Uttar Pradesh. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 23 out of 25 contested seats, while the undivided Shiv Sena secured 18 out of 23 seats.

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The Opposition hopes to cash in on the deep divisions within the Maha Yuti, the anti-incumbency factor and the anger on the ground against those who have crossed over to the ruling dispensation. But without a credible Opposition leader to counter the BJP juggernaut, it will be no cake-walk for the Pawar-Udhav-Congress alliance either. More so, as Amit Shah moves to secure the Maharashtra battleground, being seen as critical to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plans of securing a majority for a historic third term.