Thackeray, Pawar Family Reunions Fail As BJP-Led Bloc Surges In Maharashtra Municipal Polls

The political reunifications attempted by the Thackeray and Pawar families ahead of Maharashtra’s municipal elections have failed to arrest their decline, as the BJP-led alliance consolidated its dominance across the state.

The 2022–23 splits in the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had already reshaped Maharashtra’s power structure by ushering in a BJP-led government. The civic poll trends from Mumbai and Pune now suggest that the fallout from those ruptures has fully played out on the ground.

Despite high-profile reconciliations within both families, the BJP and its allies appear set to tighten their grip over key urban power centres.

Mumbai: Thackeray Reconciliation Yields Little

Mumbai emerged as the most closely watched battleground, where Uddhav Thackeray’s reunion with cousin Raj Thackeray after nearly 20 years failed to translate into electoral gains.

The undivided Shiv Sena, founded by Bal Thackeray, had ruled the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for 25 years, with and without the BJP, until the party split in 2022 led to prolonged delays in civic elections.

Current counting trends indicate that the BJP, along with Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena faction, which retained the party name and symbol after the split, is on course to capture India’s richest municipal body.

Shinde has consistently positioned himself as the ideological heir to Bal Thackeray’s aggressive Hindutva politics, accusing Uddhav of straying from that path by aligning with the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. This argument underpinned his 2022 rebellion, which removed Uddhav from the chief minister’s post. Since the 2024 Assembly elections, Shinde has served as deputy to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Raj Thackeray’s Throwback Pitch Fails To Shift Momentum

Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) sought to revive the street-level politics associated with the early Shiv Sena by foregrounding anti-migrant rhetoric and staking a claim to the ‘Marathi manoos’ vote bank.

He resurrected slogans from the 1960s, when the party’s anti-outsider campaign was directed largely at South Indians rather than migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which is the focus today.

“Hatao lungi, bajao pungi,” Raj Thackeray said while targeting BJP Tamil Nadu leader K Annamalai, mocking traditional South Indian attire.

However, the strategy appeared out of step with the current political landscape. Bal Thackeray himself had, over time, aligned Shiv Sena closely with BJP-style Hindutva, with anti-migrant politics playing a secondary role. With their combined strength limited, both Uddhav and Raj Thackeray now face questions over the ideological direction of their respective parties.

Pawar Reunion Falters In Pune And Pimpri-Chinchwad

The Pawar family split of 2023 — between Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar — was more straightforward, with no external faction involved. Their reconciliation for the Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad civic polls came relatively quickly, even as Ajit Pawar continues as the second deputy chief minister in the BJP-led state government.

Yet, trends as of 2 pm show that the Pawar alliance is well short of power in both corporations.

In Pune, the BJP was leading and poised for a majority. Ajit Pawar’s NCP, which retained the original party name and symbol, remained in single digits, as did Sharad Pawar’s NCP(SP), led by his daughter Supriya Sule. The Congress and the Thackeray-led parties appeared unlikely to open their accounts. Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, contesting independently here, was also set to finish without a seat.

Pimpri-Chinchwad, among the wealthiest municipal corporations after Mumbai, had been governed by Sharad Pawar’s undivided NCP from 2017 until the end of its term in 2022. Current trends show the BJP with a commanding lead, Ajit Pawar’s NCP in second place, and Sharad Pawar’s faction barely registering.

BJP Alliance Strengthens Statewide Rip

The results weaken speculation about a wider Pawar reunion at the state or national level. Talk of a significant role for Supriya Sule has been overshadowed by the scale of the electoral setbacks.

Across Maharashtra, trends indicate that the BJP-led alliance is set to win a majority of wards across all 29 municipal corporations, underlining its growing dominance as the state’s principal political force.