The stakes are thus high, not only for the parties in contest but also for the two leaders around whom the entire campaign has been conducted. Vajpayee's political stature is up for judgement while Sonia's fledgling political career will be made or marred by the number of seats she manages to win for her party.

In Maharashtra, the first phase will cover 24 Lok Sabha and 144 assembly constituencies. The polls are particularly crucial for rebel Congressman Sharad Pawar and his breakaway Nationalist Congress Party. Pawar's performance both in the Lok Sabha and in the State Assembly, will decide who runs the real Congress in the State, he or Sonia.

The focus of tomorrow's polling will be Bellary from whereSonia is making her first bid for a Lok Sabha seat. Although it is supposed to be perhaps the safest seat in the country for the Congress, Sushma Swaraj's high-voltage campaign gave the contest an unexpected zing.

Certainly, Bellary has never received the kind of attention it got this time, either from political parties or from the media. Virtually every leader of note, from Vajpayee to Advani to George Fernandes to Chandrababu Naidu, descended on this hitherto unknown mining town.

As for the Congress, Sonia was forced to not only send a high-powered women contingent to camp in the constituency but also to throw aside security considerations for last-minute canvassing in an open jeep with her daughter, Priyanka.

But Bellary is tomorrow's colour story. The real battle is being fought elsewhere, in states where incumbent governments are fighting for survival and important leaders are battling for another stint in Parliament.

Opinion polls for this round have predicted a virtual stalemate in terms ofseats for both the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and the Congress-led front. Although the latter is expected to make massive gains in Punjab, where the Akali Dal-BJP partnership is facing a strong anti-incumbency wave, its gains are likely to be nullified by its losses in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Anti-incumbency factors are also at work in Gujarat and Rajasthan but the extent of the gains to the opposition is not quite clear.

Tomorrow's polls will also determine the political future of many important leaders. At the top of the list is Home Minister L K Advani who, like Sonia in Bellary, is facing a high-profile rival in T N Seshan from his two-time constituency of Gandhinagar. Then, there is former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh, also considered the Congress party's possible prime ministerial candidate to head a coalition government, who is trying to stave off the challenge from the BJP's Vijay Kumar Malhotra riding the Vajpayee tiger.

Three state governments are also fighting forsurvival. They are the Janata Dal Government in Karnataka, the Telegu Desam Government in Andhra Pradesh and the BJP-Shiv Sena Government in Maharashtra. Polling for half the seats in the Assemblies of these states will take place tomorrow.

Others include P R Kumaramangalam (Tiruchirapalli), Ananth Kumar (Bangalore South), Jagmohan (New Delhi), Surjit Singh Barnala (Sangrur), former Lok Sabha Speaker Shivraj Patil (Latur) and former Finance Minister P Chidambaram (Sivaganga). For Chidambaram, tomorrow's poll will determine not only his personal future but that of his party, the Tamil Maanila Congress.