Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah has given a go-ahead for a formal electoral tie-up among the constituents of the ruling MahaYuti for the local body polls.
Three weeks after the Supreme Court asked the Maharashtra’s State Election Commission (SEC) to notify the local body polls within four weeks, Shah set the three constituents of the ruling MahaYuti – comprising BJP, Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar) – on a local body poll mode.
During his recent three-day visit to Maharashtra, Shah met chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and his two deputies Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar and deliberated on the impending local body polls,
It may be recalled that on May 6 when the apex court asked the SEC to notify the local body polls within four weeks and complete it within four months, Fadnavis had announced that the ruling MahaYuti would contest the local body polls as an alliance.
During his meeting with Fadnavis and two deputy chief ministers, Shah gave a formal shape to the MahaYuti’s electoral alliance for the local body polls.
The MahaYuti constituents are readying for the local body polls at a time when deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar of the NCP is not too happy with the manner in which Fadnavis inducted veteran OBC leader Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP (AP) and made him the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Minister.
The induction came at a time when there was intense speculation about the possible merger of the NCP (AP) with the Sharad Pawar-led NCP.
What is surprising is that the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – comprising the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP)—has not yet made a formal announcement about its plans to contest the local body polls as an alliance.
On his part, Maharashtra Congress president Harshavardhan Sapkal held back to back meetings with NCP (SP) supremo Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray.
Apart from the talk about the possible merger of the two factions of the NCP led by Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar, speculation is also rife about the possibility of Uddhav Thackeray and his estranged cousin and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) joining hands to contest the local body polls.
Given that 29 municipal corporations, 257 municipal councils, 26 Zilla Parishads, 289 Panchayat Samitis will go to polls, the forthcoming local body polls are being seen as a mini State Assembly election.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which incidentally is Asia’s largest and the country’s richest civic body, will be among 29 municipal corporations that will go to the polls as part of the local body elections. The polls are of considerable significance for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) because all the nine municipal corporations of the MMR including Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Panvel, Mira-Bhayander and Vasai-Virar will usher in a new elected body.
Equally crucial are polls to the municipal corporations of Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (erstwhile Aurangabad), Nagpur and Amravati.
It may be recalled that in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress-led MVA had put up a superlative performance by winning 30 out of 48 seats, while the BJP-led MahaYuti had secured 17 seats.
However, the BJP-led notched up landslide victory in the 2025 State Assembly polls by winning 235 seats in the 288-member House, while the Opposition MVA constituents collectively secured a mere 46 seats.
If anything, the local body outcome will reflect the current mood of the people in the state.
