Mumbai: After dominating the municipal council polls across the state, the Mahayuti and, especially, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) further strengthened its presence in urban Maharashtra by nearly sweeping the polls across 29 municipal corporations that went to polls Thursday.
While the polls have brought “Mahayuti a Maha victory” in Maharashtra—Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’s words—the poll results will likely shake things up within the ruling Mahayuti, comprising the BJP, the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), redefining power equations.
While counting was still in progress at 6 pm, CM Fadnavis, addressing his party workers at the BJP headquarters in Mumbai, had said that Mahayuti will establish power in roughly 25 of 29 municipal corporations.
“We went into this election with the agenda of development, and the people have responded to it overwhelmingly. We have secured record-breaking mandates in different corporations,” Fadnavis said.
In a taunt at the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, which focused all its energy in Mumbai but was trailing the BJP as of Friday, 6 pm, Fadnavis said, “The result has shown that Maharashtra trusts PM Narendra Modi. I would also like to remember Hinduhriday Samrat Balasaheb Thackeray because his blessings were also with the Mahayuti, because of which we have got this mandate.”
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Congress President Harshwardhan Sapkal, in a statement, said that the party will have a mayor in five corporations and nearly 350 corporators and will be part of the ruling alliance in ten civic bodies.
Sapkal said, “The results may not be satisfactory, but we fought an ideological battle without worrying about success or failure.”
The BJP had got a comfortable majority on its own in 15 municipal corporations including Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Navi Mumbai, Mira Bhayander, Panvel, Nagpur, Solapur, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, among others.
The Mahayuti allies contested the municipal corporation polls held across all major cities in Maharashtra in various combinations, some independently against each other, some in pairs of two with the third ally in the Opposition, and some with all three Mahayuti partners in an alliance.
In four corporations—Mumbai, Ulhasnagar, Amravati and Akola—BJP emerged as the party with the highest seats, but needs Mahayuti allies to form the government.
In three other corporations, BJP’s allies emerged as the party with the highest tally— Shinde-led Shiv Sena in Thane and Kalyan Dombivali, and Ajit Pawar-led NCP in Ahilyanagar. In Kolhapur, the Congress emerged as the single largest party shy of the half way mark, but Mahayuti allies stacked up a tally sufficient to form the government.
The Congress won three corporations—Chandrapur, Latur and Bhiwandi-Nizampur, while the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena won Parbhani.
The Mahayuti swept the first round of local body polls, which was held in December last year, when 288 urban local bodies—246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats—went to polls.
The BJP won the presidential post in 117 local bodies, followed by the Shinde-led Shiv Sena with 53 council presidents elected, and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP with 37.
“There were two battles taking place within these elections in 29 municipal corporations. The first and most prominent of the battles was one within the Mahayuti allies, and the second one was between the Mahayuti and the Opposition parties. The BJP has dominated both,” Sanjay Patil, a researcher at the politics and civics department of the Mumbai University.
“Overall, the three ruling parties were mainly fighting with each other, and the Opposition was either weak or didn’t enter effective alliances. All of this benefitted the BJP,” Patil said.
Dhurandhar Devendra, Shinde’s crutches
At the BJP headquarters, where all major leaders had gathered for victory celebrations, there were several placards with “Dhurandhar Devendra” written on them, in reference to the popular thriller.
While Fadnavis thanked Modi and Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray for the victory, in the rank and file of the BJP in Maharashtra, Fadnavis had scraped the party’s path to urban dominance in Maharashtra.
Fadnavis addressed 37 major rallies across the state and pulled off the victory without any campaigns by the senior BJP leadership. Nearly 20 of the 25 municipal corporations where Fadnavis said there will be a Mahayuti mayor are the civic bodies where the BJP has put up some of its strongest performances. Moreover, CM Fadnavis likely paved the way for having the first-ever BJP mayor in Mumbai.
“He did all of this, without any need for Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Union Home Minister Amit Shah to campaign in Maharashtra. This will significantly boost Devendra Fadnavis’s political stock, while limiting Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar,” political commentator Hemant Desai said.
Ever since Mahayuti 2.0 came to power with Fadnavis as the CM, there has been a very obvious power tussle underway between former CM Eknath Shinde, now Deputy CM, and CM Fadnavis.
While the BJP has cemented its victory as the undisputed number one in the state, carrying forward its momentum from the state assembly polls, Friday’s results show the party still needs to depend on the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, especially in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
“BJP wanted to grow in Mumbai independently of any Shiv Sena, but that doesn’t seem to be immediately possible. The results show Thackeray still has support in Mumbai. It has a fighting chance in the city,” Desai said, adding that Shinde’s support is important for the BJP in Mumbai.
In absolute numbers, Shinde’s leads in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) were limited to the middle 20s. Analysts, however, point out that between the wards the Thackeray-led faction won and those Shinde’s party clinched, the Shiv Sena’s space in Mumbai’s politics seems intact—across roughly 30 percent of the total seats. If the BJP wants to come to power in Mumbai, it still needs the Shinde-led Shiv Sena’s crutches.
Outside Mumbai, within the larger Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena dominated the local bodies of Thane, Shinde’s home turf, and Kalyan Dombivli. Shinde’s son, Shrikant Shinde, is an MP from Kalyan.
In the 78-member Ulhasnagar, while the BJP was the single largest party with 37 seats, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena was close behind at 36.
Also Read: BJP’s sweep, boost for Shinde, MVA’s fall—what local body polls say about power play in Maharashtra
Despondent Pawar & his patronage networks
Within the Mahayuti government under Fadnavis, while there has been an ongoing tug of war between Fadnavis and Shinde, the other Deputy CM, Ajit Pawar, preferred to stay out of the slugfest for the most part.
Pawar showed restraint even when two of his party’s ministers—Dhananjay Mundhe and Manikrao Kokate—faced the axe from the Maharashtra Cabinet due to various controversies. Similarly, he chose not to react when CM Fadnavis promptly set up an inquiry into allegations of grabbing land and evading stamp duty against Pawar’s son Parth.
In the campaign for the municipal corporation polls, Pawar focused all his energy on the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad municipal corporations, considered the NCP’s biggest urban bastions. Ajit Pawar joined hands with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP to defeat the BJP, and the Mahayuti allies agreed on a “friendly fight”. However, the contest turned ugly and bitter as Deputy CM Pawar levelled corruption allegations against the BJP. Maharashtra BJP President Ravindra Chavan even responded by saying that the BJP should have never allied with Ajit Pawar’s NCP.
The Friday results in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad shaved several inches off Ajit Pawar’s stature, as the BJP secured a decisive lead in both the local bodies.
“Ajit Pawar’s support structure in the Pune district included the local elites, the landowning Marathas. After 1999, these families in politics left the Congress, acting out against Suresh Kalmadi and joined the NCP. Post 2014, they left the NCP and joined the BJP. So, the people delivering the wins are the same; it is just that their party has changed,” Nitin Birmal, associate professor at Pune’s Dr Ambedkar Art & Commerce College, told ThePrint.
“Ajit Pawar’s urban power centres were mostly Pune, Ahilyanagar, and Solapur—most of these have crumbled. This will cost him his bargaining power within the Mahayuti,” Birmal said.
Among these, Ahilyanagar was the only civic body where the Ajit Pawar-led NCP emerged as the single-largest party with 27 seats in the 68-member body, closely followed by the BJP with 25.
On Friday, there was a stoic silence from the NCP camp.
Anand Paranjape, NCP spokesperson, did not respond to ThePrint’s call for a comment.
However, Ajinkya Gaikwad, an academician and political researcher, said that despite everything, the BJP still cannot afford to write off Ajit Pawar.
In Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, there are still some “semi-rural elements of politics” where Ajit Pawar has influence, which could be important for local elections, or even an assembly segment. There are patronage networks in the Pune Metropolitan Region, which comprises comparatively newer urban areas,” Gaikwad told ThePrint.
“Newer cities hold on to their patronage networks very tightly, as against a city like Mumbai, and because of these patronage networks, which are very strong and entrenched, Ajit Pawar will have a certain hold in certain pockets,” he added.
This is an updated version of the report.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)