NEW DELHI, Aug 25: The two blasts in Mumbai on Monday coincided with a seemingly unrelated but bitter split in Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s coalition in faraway Uttar Pradesh, both triggering fears of a violent election season ahead.

Reports quoted intelligence officials in Mumbai as suggesting the blasts could be the handiwork of a rightwing Islamic students’ group with alleged links to the Lashkar-i-Taiba group banned in Pakistan.

Identical allegations in Gujarat last year when Muslims were accused of setting a train carriage with Hindu pilgrims on fire had led to large-scale violence in February-March that year. The anti-Muslin pogroms polarised the state communally and set the stage for the subsequent landslide victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

One of the explosions on Monday occurred in Mumbai’s predominantly Gujarati business district of Zhaveri Bazar, the city’s main diamond market, leading to speculations of vendetta for last year’s violence in Gujarat.

Sensing trouble Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde has appealed for calm, although fears of a Hindu backlash remained high, officials and analysts said.

Among those terrified by the prospect of violence was the business community, and the Confederation of Indian Industry, a leading business club, urged people not to be provoked by rumours.

Fears of further violence came alive at Mumbai’s bourses where share values virtually crashed after reports of the blasts, driving the BSE down by over 180 points. Twenty-eight out of the BSE 30 stocks fell drastically. The markets recovered partially just before the end of the day and closed at 4004, down 120 points.

If the immediate toll of the Mumbai blasts was reflected in the market’s anxiety, Prime Minister Vajpayee’s political fortunes seemed to have plunged to a new low in Uttar Pradesh.

His claims in parliament last week of a united coalition taking on a divided opposition were jolted by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ms Mayawati as she announced snapping all ties with his National Democratic Alliance.

In a surprise move that shocked her friends and foes alike, Ms Mayawati asked state Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri, a BJP nominee, to dissolve the legislature and hold fresh elections. But she has refused to resign until her demand was first heeded.

At a public rally in Lucknow, at precisely the time of the blasts in Mumbai, she called for the sacking of Rajnath Singh, a senior upper caste Hindu minister in Mr Vajpayee’s cabinet, as a condition for continuing her alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP is unlikely to oblige.

Uttar Pradesh returns 85 MPs to the Lok Sabha. While Ms Mayawati would seek to reap benefits from the caste polarization following her split with the BJP, even as she keeps the flock of her Dalit party intact, the BJP, in a third major development on Monday, has found the temple-mosque controversy heating up again as a potential poll issue.

The Uttar Pradesh High Court made public on Monday the findings of the Archeological Survey of India, which has studied under court orders the site where the Babri mosque stood. Reports said the ASI has found the remains of a 10th century structure underneath the controversial site. Rightwing Hindu groups have claimed the razed mosque had stood at the site of a temple.

With Uttar Pradesh poised for elections, its control has become the biggest single quest for the involved political parties. The opposition Congress party rules all the other four states going to polls later this year where its main rival is the BJP.

A communal agenda looks to be a likely battle line ahead. Hindu mobs are already out in Bhopal targeting a play by the noted playwright Habib Tanvir that depicts India’s social inequalities. Whether the communal agenda succeeds will depend on the opposition’s political skills as also pressures from a worried business community to desist from the ruinous path that easily tempts the politicians at election time.