The 2022–23 splits of the Thackerays’ Shiv Sena and Pawars’ NCP in Maharashtra landed their breakaway groups in a BJP-led government in the state; but the implosions appear to have taken full effect now.
The family legacies appear to be in a shambles with the results of the municipal elections in their strongholds of Mumbai and Pune, despite the clans’ divergent branches coming together after long gaps.
BMC election results: Thackeray reunion couldn;t stop Hindutva brigade, show trends
At the centre of this election is Mumbai, where Uddhav Thackeray’s making up with cousin Raj after two decades does not seem to have meant much in the end.
The rule of the undivided Shiv Sena founded by Uddhav’s late father Bal Thackeray lasted 25 years here — with and without the BJP — until 2022, since when elections were pending.
Going by the counting trends, the BJP plus deputy CM Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, which got the party’s name and symbol after the 2022 split, looks set to take power in India’s richest local body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which manages the country’s financial capital.
Eknath Shinde has long claimed Bal Thackeray’s aggressive legacy of Hindutva, terming the relatively moderate Uddhav as having diverged by aligning for power with the Congress and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. That was his stated logic for breaking away in 2022 with BJP’s support, and replacing Uddhav as CM. Shinde is now deputy to CM Devendra Fadnavis since the 2024 assembly election.
In the fight for a legacy of street aggression, Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), formed after Bal Thackeray favoured son Uddhav as his successor, brought back some of the original Thackeray flavour. He deployed anti-migrant sentiment, laid a claim to the ‘Marathi manoos’ vote bank, and recycled Bal Thackeray’s original slogans from the 1960s, when the anti-‘outsider’ sentiment was directed more against South Indians, unlike those from North Indian states like UP and Bihar now.
“Hatao lungi, bajao pungi,” he harked back, attacking BJP’s Tamil Nadu leader K Annamalai by making fun of the loincloth traditionally worn by many South Indians.
But the boat appears to have sailed, as even Bal Thackeray had long shifted to a BJP-adjacent Hindutva line in his politics with the anti-migrant stance as plus-one. Uddhav and Raj may call BJP’s Hindutva fake, but lack of numbers would now mean they have a central question to answer for themselves: What’s their Senas’ core ideology?
What happens to the two NCPs now? Ominous signs from Pune
The Sharad Pawar-Ajit Pawar uncle-nephew split of 2023 was more straightforward in one sense — there was no family outsider like Shinde involved in their feud. Their making up also happened more quickly thus, for the municipal elections in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, even when Ajit remains the second deputy CM in the BJP-led state government.
But in both Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, their strongholds, the Pawar alliance is far from power, as per result trends as of 2pm.
The BJP was leading in Pune, set for majority. The NCP of Ajit Pawar, which has the original name and symbol, was in single digits, as was the NCP(SP) led by Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule. The Congress and the Thackerays’ parties did not look like they would open their account. Eknath Shinde’s Sena is on its own here — not with the BJP — and looked set to to end up with zero.
The Pimpri-Chinchwad corporation, considered one of the richest after Mumbai’s, was held by Sharad Pawar’s undivided NCP since 2017 until the end of the last term in 2022. Here, as of 2pm trends, the BJP had taken a wide lead with Ajit Pawar’s NCP a respectable second but Sharad Pawar’s party hardly on the scoreboard.
This puts a spanner again in talk that the Pawar may even come back together at the state and central levels. There was chatter of a plum post for Supriya Sule, but all that is eclipsed by ground realities and lost strength for now, until or unless Maharashtra sees another big churn within families and alliances.
Across the state, the BJP-led alliance was set to win a majority of the wards in the 29 corporations.
