New Delhi: The results for the Lok Sabha elections will start coming in quite rapidly on Saturday because of the electronic voting machines.
For all our major political formations, the last few nights have been sleepless affairs, and the next couple of days will be tense as they try and cobble together alliances.
It seems quite obvious that both the NDA and the UPA will need to bring in allies with a significant seat share to have any hope of coming to power.
And the race to rope in partners for the formation of the government is at its most crucial stage as all both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are exploring all possible options.
After taking centre stage in the Congress party's efforts to reach out to allies by meeting NCP chief Sharad Pawar and making a phone call to RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, Congress president Sonia Gandhi deputed senior party leader Pranab Mukherjee to meet Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh.
The Congress seems to have realised that unlike in the last elections, this time round, it will probably have to do business with the Samajwadi Party, though it knows that choosing this option could mean some hard bargaining for some high profile ministries.
On the other hand, while JD(U) chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has made it clear that he is with the NDA, one of his senior leaders Sharad Yadav has indicated that his party is keeping its options open.
He is talking to unlikely friends such as LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan of the Fourth Front and JD(S) supremo HD Deve Gowda of the Third Front. It's not clear if he's doing this on behalf of the NDA or the JD(U). Speaking to NDTV, he made it clear his party does not have an alliance with the BJP in Narendra Modi's Gujarat.
Meanwhile, the NCP chief Sharad Pawar may have had an hour-long meeting with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, but he's clearly keeping his options open as well.
Speaking to Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt on India Decides at 9, senior NCP leader Praful Patel said that his party will support any secular formation and that Pawar and he are in talks with the Third Front and the Bihar troika of Lalu, Paswan and Mulayam Singh Yadav.
In the BJP camp, key negotiator Narendra Modi has been deputed to convince AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa, another potential kingmaker who's said she'll decide who to go with after May 16. He telephoned her on the day Tamil Nadu went to the polls to wish her luck.
And the Congress is making all out efforts to reach out to the BJD's Naveen Patnaik. NDTV's exit poll shows the UPA is doing extremely well in Orissa, but the Congress knows that it would need the support of parties like the BJD in government formation. Senior leader Kamal Nath and Orissa Congress chief KP Singh Deo are in talks with Naveen Patnaik
Also reaching out to Naveen Patnaik is his old former ally, the BJP, which has deputed Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Swapan Das Gupta and Chandan Mitra to speak to him. Naveen of course has kept his options open though he publicly maintained that he would support a non-BJP and non-Congress formation at the Centre.
And in touch with Andhra actor Chiranjeevi, who's contesting for the first time, is the Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh. Chiranjeevi's party is projected to take away some of the TDP's vote share and could emerge as a surprise winner in the elections. Amar Singh had earlier invited Chiranjeevi to join the Fourth Front, but he had remained non-committal.
Still though, everything that is happening is entirely fluid. So while there may be indications that the Samajwadi Party, for example, may be going the UPA way, its not stopped their leaders from speaking to NDA leaders.
BJP president Rajnath was all ears for Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh at a late night dinner meeting on Thursday. The occasion was the wedding of one of Rajnath Singh's aides to which Amar Singh was invited.