State assembly elections are due to be held in April and May in four big states-the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and the eastern states of West Bengal and Assam-and the union territory of Puducherry (Pondicherry). The state elections will not alter the situation in the federal parliament, where the UPA government has 272 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha (the lower house), giving it a narrow majority. However, they are likely to determine the degree of political influence wielded in future by two of Congress's main allies, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu, and the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. In early March the DMK, which holds 18 seats in the federal lower house and leads the state government in Tamil Nadu, threatened to quit the UPA in an apparent attempt to extract concessions from Congress. But the two parties managed to reach a deal over a seat-sharing arrangement, and the DMK retracted its threat. (Congress forced the DMK to accept its demand to contest 63 seats in the 234-member Tamil Nadu state assembly; the DMK had initially demanded that Congress run in only 60 constituencies, leaving the remaining seats to be contested by the DMK.)

The West Bengal poll is also crucial. The leader of the Trinamool Congress and federal railways minister, Mamata Banerjee, hopes to unseat the Left Front, the alliance of left-wing parties that currently governs West Bengal and is led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI (M). The Trinamool Congress is also Congress's biggest ally at the federal level, with 19 seats in the Lok Sabha. It swept West Bengal in the 2009 general election owing to widespread resentment there of the CPI (M), owing to the fact that the latter was perceived to have mishandled land acquisitions in the state. On March 21st this year Congress and the Trinamool Congress agreed to fight the West Bengal election together, but Congress was forced to make concessions regarding the number of seats that it will contests in the state. Under the deal, Congress will run in 65 seats (out of a total of 294), compared with its initial demand to compete in 98 seats. The agreement reflects Congress's limited negotiating power with a crucial ally.

In Assam, Congress appears well placed to retain power. In Kerala, it hopes to oust the CPI (M), which has governed in the state since 2006, when it ousted a Congress-led coalition government.