What BJP’s dominance, in BMC polls and beyond, signals for Opposition, allies
With the BJP and the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde crossing the halfway mark in Mumbai, the Thackerays will have to reassess, as their plank of Marathi consolidation appears not to have worked.
The BJP and the Sena, led by Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, have crossed the halfway mark in the 227-member BMC, while the Devendra Fadnavis-led party looks set to retain the Pune Municipal Corporation. (Express Photo by Sankhadeep Banerjee) Just over a year after it stormed to power in Maharashtra, the BJP, along with the Shiv Sena, is set to stamp its dominance at the grassroots level as it leads in 22 of the 29 municipal corporations where polling was held on Thursday.
Apart from Mumbai, where the BJP and the Sena, led by Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, have crossed the halfway mark in the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the Devendra Fadnavis-led party also looks set to retain the Pune Municipal Corporation and has ensured massive leads in Nagpur, Solapur, and Akola. The trends in the BMC polls also mean that the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) won’t be at the helm of the civic body for the first time in 25 years.
As per the trends, the BJP had a lead in 92 seats while the Sena (UBT) was leading in 60, marginally better than what the exit polls had predicted. The Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) had a lead in about 9 seats, showing that Uddhav’s strategy of joining hands with his cousin and consolidating the Marathi vote bank has not worked in the face of the BJP’s development narrative. The Congress had a lead in 13 seats in BMC, while the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party had a lead in 3. Others were leading in 8 seats. The counting in the BMC is moving at a slow pace as Returning Officers are counting only two wards at a time. This means that the final results will be available after 3 PM.
In Mumbai, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM was a surprise package, registering wins in at least two wards and leading in two more. The party not only seems to have overtaken the Samajwadi Party, which was dealing with infighting, but also appears to have dented the Congress at several places.
In neighbouring Thane, the Shinde-led Sena was leading in 24, while the BJP had a lead in 15. Both parties allied in Thane, which is the home turf of Eknath Shinde. In Navi Mumbai, the BJP trumped the Sena.
In CM Devendra Fadnavis’s hometown of Nagpur, the BJP crossed the majority mark while the Congress led in 35 seats, increasing its previous tally.
The Congress has crossed the majority mark in Latur and is leading in Kolhapur. A tough fight is unfolding in Bhiwandi, Chandrapur, Sangli, Parbhani, and Malegaon municipal corporations.
In Latur, the alliance of the Congress and the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi has already crossed the halfway mark. The election in Latur had heated up after state BJP chief Ravindra Chavan’s remarks against former Maharashtra CM late Vilasrao Deshmukh, who was from there, during campaigning. In Kolhapur, the Congress and BJP are engaged in a tough battle, while in Chandrapur, the Congress is in the lead.
A few questions
The results show the BJP consolidating its dominance in Maharashtra politics, squeezing out the Opposition that appears to have not recovered from the 2024 Assembly poll drubbing. The results raise several questions, among them:
a. What does the BJP’s overarching dominance mean both for its allies and its rivals?
b. Where will the Opposition go from here now that their localised strategies — the Thackerays reuniting and the two NCPs coming together in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad — appear not to have worked?
c. Will the Thackeray cousins continue their alliance post-polls, and does this signal that the Marathi vote bank is out of their hands?
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