THE one-sided results of the elections for 29 Municipal Corporations in Maharashtra favouring the ruling combine led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have painted an entirely changed political picture of the State. Many old castles stand demolished and many egos have been smashed to smithereens. Maharashtra politics will never remain the same hereafter. The focal point of this electoral battle was the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) where Mr. Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray-led Shiv Sena was fighting with its back to the wall, despite the fact that his cousin Mr. Raj Thackeray had joined hands with him.

 

The outcome -- the win of the BJP-(Shinde)Shiv Sena -- was almost a foregone conclusion. Yet, it must be admitted that Mr. Uddhav Thackeray held on to his ground to a great extent and demonstrated his hold on the Mumbai electorate with sizeable numbers of seats in his favour. The outcome may force Mr. Uddhav Thackeray to rethink his strategy, he has somehow managed to retain his hold in Mumbai. However, in other parts of the State, UBT Shiv Sena became only an also-ran party, with its footprint having been erased in most places. In comparison, Shiv Sena led by Deputy Chief Minister Mr. Eknath Shinde did just about okay in the State, riding mostly on the organisational strength of the ally BJP. In the years to come, he will have to work the hardest to strengthen his party well beyond normal definitions -- if at all he wants to make the difference.

 

In the current elections, Mr. Eknath Shinde could have found himself reduced to nothing had he not stayed in the alliance with the BJP led by the charismatic Chief Minister Mr. Devendra Fadnavis. But the worst sufferer of these municipal corporation polls was the so-called Maratha strongman Mr. Sharad Pawar with the performance of his faction of Nationalist Congress Party hitting its lowest ever numbers. Mr. Sharad Pawar proved once again that he has been the most over-rated politician in Maharashtra -- with little to show above the ground, with little to demonstrate his political acumen. All he has been able to achieve in his long career is the political trickery that kept him afloat but never on the top -- except for short periods. Mr. Sharad Pawar proved to be a political middleman who thrived on dirty and unethical machinations -- beyond which he knew nothing. The current elections showed him his place in the total scheme of things in Maharashtra. His nephew -- Deputy Chief Minister Mr. Ajit Pawar -- too cut a sorry figure for his faction of the party. There are reasons to believe that the Pawar clan will have to work themselves upside down only in order to survive in politics in the next few years.

 

The Congress party did win a decent number of seats, all right, but that was far too lower than its worst performance in the past. This was so because the party does not have an ideology to brandish and an organisation to flaunt. It is one party that shows consistency in its foolishness to push fake narratives whose logic the voter never understands. In Maharashtra, Congress today is a party whose numbers or whose strategy do not figure anywhere in the larger picture in electoral politics. In sharp contrast, the BJP led by Mr. Devendra Fadnavis has shown what a well-oiled organisational machinery can achieve in any situation. It did suffer a setback in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. But that taught the BJP a great lesson. The subsequent period saw the BJP rebuilding its own internal systems and processes to such a perfection that it made the country feel surprised with the performance in the legislative elections just a few months later. And the showing in the municipal corporation elections, the BJP’s showing reached an unprecedented peak. No matter what the BJP’s critics might have to say about this stupendous journey, the common voter realises that the BJP is the best party to choose from the entire pack. Such a clarity Maharashtra had not seen in decades.