File Picture : ANI/X
As Maharashtra heads to the elections for 29 municipal corporations, the spotlight is on Mumbai, where the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti is locked in a battle with the united Thackeray front for control of the cash-rich Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has predicted that Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray would emerge as the biggest loser in his alliance with cousin and Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray president Uddhav Thackeray.
He also dismissed the coming together of both Nationalist Congress Party factions in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad as merely a localised development.
Fadnavis rued that Deputy Chief Minister and NCP leader Ajit Pawar broke the rule that the alliance partners will not speak against each other.
Fadnavis led the ruling alliance’s canvassing, traversing the state to campaign for candidates of the Mahayuti, which includes the BJP and the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
NCP, the third partner in the Mahayuti, was strategically excluded to attract ‘non-Hindu’ voters, observers said.
This will be the Shiv Sena’s first BMC election since the 2022 split, when Eknath Shinde broke away with a majority of the party’s legislators, along with its name and symbol. The undivided Shiv Sena had held sway over the country’s richest civic body for 25 years.
