Watch Nidhi Razdan: All eyes in Maharastra elections

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00:00With the election dates out for Maharashtra and Jharkhand, all eyes are now on Maharashtra

00:08in particular, where the outcome will significantly set the tone for the remainder of Narendra

00:14Modi's third term in office. Simply because the BJP stopped at 240 in the Lok Sabha election

00:21and it's got a huge boost with the shock win in Haryana recently. And if it is able to

00:26win Maharashtra and Jharkhand as well, it will really completely finish that narrative

00:31that the BJP is defensive and on the back foot. Maharashtra, of course, is particularly

00:36intriguing because of the kind of twists and turns that we've seen in the state's politics

00:41over the last few years. The BJP has made alliances, it has broken parties, there are

00:48all kinds of factions in play. And the fight is essentially between two different coalitions,

00:53which makes reading the state much more harder than it does others. Now, a win in Haryana

01:00has actually strengthened the BJP's morale, the morale of its cadre, but it has also at

01:05the same time really put the Congress in particular on the back foot. Because in Maharashtra,

01:10the Congress is dealing with allies like the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena

01:15and Sharad Pawar's NCP. And these allies are going to become much more difficult when it

01:20comes to seat sharing talks with the Congress now, because it wasn't able to pull its weight

01:25in Haryana, nor in Jammu and Kashmir, where the clear party that dominated was the National

01:31Conference, the Congress winning just six seats in that state. So the outcome of these

01:38state polls is really going to determine the trajectory that we see in Indian politics

01:44for the next few years.

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