Srinagar, Dec. 27: Interned separatist leaders have been released, the six-month ban on mobile texting has been relaxed, but a day ahead of counting Kashmir finds itself caught in an unnerving twist: who’ll win and, even more, who’ll take power?

It could well be, after all, that the winner of these elections may not eventually get to wear the crown. Such may be the fracture in the mandate that even losers can combine to secure the advantage of arithmetic and subvert the political spirit of the mandate.

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) has been on a surge, spreading to parts of the Valley, and Jammu, where it has had no presence hitherto; the Abdullahs of the National Conference have been in a desperate survival battle, having been out of power for six years already. The Congress is banking on getting enough to become kingmaker.

Neither of the two major parties — the PDP and the National Conference — has been able to make credible claims of getting to the halfway mark in the 87-member Assembly on its own. Nor is it that any of them has struck an overt pre-poll understanding with others. The Congress and the PDP did run an alliance government from 2002, but it came unstuck in ugly fashion over the Amarnath row this summer, resulting in the downfall of the Ghulam Nabi Azad government.

Since then, the Congress has kept its cards close to its chest. This has left the field open for all manner of jockeying and deal-making once the numbers are on the table for them to play with. “The critical thing is who gets how many, that is what will decide who allies with who,” said a senior Congress leader. “As of now, nobody is committed to anybody although all parties know they will need the collaboration of another to form the government.”

But competitive manoeuvring has already begun behind the scenes between the contenders. The most high-profile act of setting the stage was National Conference patron Farooq Abdullah landing up en famille to greet Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Christmas. Although nobody can vouch whether there was any political content to the meeting of the clans over Christmas dinner, the fact that it happened in the middle of a bitterly fought election has sparked off raving speculation in the Valley about a Congress-National Conference rapprochement.

Some, particularly in the National Conference camp, have even been spreading the word, with little to back their information, that the “new generation” — Rahul Gandhi, Omar Abdullah and Farooq’s son-in-law Sachin Pilot — has played a role in giving a “new twist” to the love-hate roller-coaster that the two families have ridden since the Jawaharlal Nehru-Sheikh Abdullah days.

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed of the PDP has been working his own channels with the Congress, although his supporters are more circumspect about forecasting which way the Congress will go. The Mufti met senior Congressman and backroom player Makhanlal Fotedar at his resplendent Fairview mansion in the VIP district of Gupkar last week.

Sources close to him also told The Telegraph that the wily patron of the PDP thinks he has other powerful backers like external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and the political secretary to Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel. Mukherjee had come to Srinagar for a day ahead of the final phase of polling and hinted strongly that the Congress was inclined to renew its alliance with the PDP.

Former chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, though, is learnt to be averse to shaking hands with the Mufti, primarily because he blames him for the “embarrassment” over the opening of the Amarnath row and, eventually, his downfall.

Azad, Congress circles suggest, has been nudging Sonia and the party leadership back to favouring the Abdullahs.

The Congress’s own performance will depend hugely on how well or badly the BJP does in the Jammu region as they share more or less the same vote bank.

In the 2002 elections the BJP had been routed, gaining just one seat in the Assembly. But following the prolonged Amarnath agitation of the summer and the consequent communal polarisation, the BJP is expected to return far more seats this time at the expense of the Congress.

But the key to all of that —who goes with who — still lies in the numbers that begin tumbling out of the voting machines tomorrow. This has been an election like no other Kashmir can remember — an unprecedented number of parties and candidates, an intense political contest that put the separatists on the sidelines, and, most of all, a startlingly high turnout. For all those reasons, and more, tomorrow could spring many surprises. The twist in the Valley is, nobody is quite willing, or able, to bet this way or that.