Party sources here say the alliance in Maharashtra has unhinged the cohesion among senior party leaders and at least two of Pawar's senior colleagues, P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar, may now be compelled to make their own choices. Sangma and Anwar along with Pawar were the founding fathers of the NCP after their expulsion from the Congress for questioning the leadership and foreign origins of Sonia Gandhi.

While Anwar, who lost from the Katihar Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, had expressed his reservations on the issue of allying with the Congress in Maharashtra, Sangma has been more vocal, saying that sitting in the opposition was better. In fact, he made it clear a couple of days ago, when talks between the NCP and Congress were still in progress, that hewould have to consider his ``future course of action'' if any alliance was forged.

Under pressure to present a united front, Anwar, who is also general secretary in-charge of Maharashtra, on Sunday said that there were no differences over the party coming to an understanding with the Congress in Maharashtra. Another general secretary and party spokesperson, Devindranath Dwivedi, told The Indian Express that his party had little choice in the matter as the MLAs were increasingly vulnerable ``to poaching'' both by the Congress and the Shiv Sena-BJP combine.

Sangma has, however, been ``unavailable'' to the media since Saturday evening when news of the Maharasthra alliance came in and on Sunday his personal staff said he had left for an unknown destination outside the Capital. He is, however, learnt to have told his NCP colleagues that he stands ``disassociated'' from the Maharashtra developments.

The peeved North-East leader was said to be have been flirting with the BJP since Pawar's alliance withhis recent adversaries has left the former with very little future in the NCP. It was in this context that he engineered the re-alignment of the coalition government in his home state of Meghalaya where the NCP and BJP have become the new partners of the United Democratic Party (UDP)-led government in place of the Congress.

While NCP leaders, including Pawar, have been making all-out efforts to bring Sangma in line, sulking over being isolated in the party, the former Lok Sabha Speaker, sources say, is also toying with a proposal to float a regional outfit in the North-East.

A fledgling party, the NCP had contested as many as 125 seats all over the country in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections but was able to net only seven in its kitty, with six from Maharashtra alone and one from Meghalaya, won by Sangma.

Sources within the NCP feel that with the very foundation of the party -- that of fighting the Congress under Sonia and the forces of communalism under BJP -- having come under strain, thereremains little that can keep the party together except perhaps in Maharashtra.

``The NCP has now been reduced to a Maharashtra-specific and Pawar-specific outfit...there is not much in it at the moment for party leaders and workers in other states,'' a senior leader admitted to The Indian Express.

But Pawar apologists point out that given the electoral arithmetic in the State Assembly, the Maratha strongman had little choice but to ally with the Congress even when the latter was not too keen on forming the government initially. ``The party MLAs made it clear that they would en masse cross over to the Congress if negotiations were stalled, that's why the acceptance of a Congress Chief Minister and that too Vilasrao Deshmukh, a known Pawar baiter,'' another party leader said.