Equitable versus nearly equitable coloring and the Chen-Lih-Wu conjecture

Chen, Lih, and Wu conjectured that for r ≥ 3, the only connected graphs with maximum degree at most r that are not equitably r-colorable are K _r,r (for odd r) and K _r+1. If true, this would be a strengthening of the Hajnal-Szemerédi Theorem and Brooks’ Theorem. We extend their conjecture to disconnected graphs. For r ≥ 6 the conjecture says the following: If an r-colorable graph G with maximum degree r is not equitably r-colorable then r is odd, G contains K _r,r and V(G) partitions into subsets V ₀, …, V _t such that GV ₀] = K _r,r and for each 1 ≤ i ≤ t, GV _i ] = K _r . We characterize graphs satisfying the conclusion of our conjecture for all r and use the characterization to prove that the two conjectures are equivalent. This new conjecture may help to prove the Chen-Lih-Wu Conjecture by induction.