The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance made a clean sweep of the municipal corporation elections in Maharashtra on Friday, with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis terming the victory a “landslide mandate” attributed to the party’s “all-encompassing” Hindutva.
The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance is set to come to power in 25 of the 29 municipal corporations, including Mumbai, where elections were held on January 15, Fadnavis said, addressing jubilant party workers in south Mumbai in the evening.
Results of elections in all the 227 wards in Mumbai were declared around midnight. The BJP became the single largest party by winning 89 seats, while ally Shiv Sena (Eknath Shinde faction) bagged 29 seats, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) got 65 and MNS six seats.
The Congress, which fought in alliance with Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, bagged 24 seats, AIMIM 8, NCP 3, Samajwadi Party 2 and NCP (SP) got just one seat.
This is the first time that the Thackerays lost control of India’s richest civic body, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), after ruling it for over 25 years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked the voters over the emphatic victory of BJP and allies in the civic polls, and congratulated the NDA.
“Thank you, Maharashtra! The dynamic people of the state bless the NDA’s agenda of pro-people good governance,” he posted on X.
“I’m very proud of every NDA karyakarta who worked tirelessly among people across Maharashtra. They talked about our alliance’s track record, highlighted our vision for the coming times and also effectively countered the lies of the Opposition. My best wishes to them,” the PM said.
Results in 2,833 of the 2,868 seats in the 29 civic bodies declared showed the BJP won 1400 and ally Shiv Sena bagged 397 seats, while Shiv Sena (UBT) got 153 and MNS 13 seats in the state. The Congress bagged 324 seats.
The BJP-led alliance bagged 118 seats to surpass the 114-seat majority mark in the 227-member BMC, which is India’s richest civic body, whose budget for 2025-26 is a whopping Rs 74,427 crore.
In Thane, the home turf of Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, his faction of the Shiv Sena pulled off a victory for the Mahayuti, winning 75 of the 131 seats, while ally BJP won 28 seats.
In Pune and neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporation polls, the BJP is heading towards a massive victory, way ahead of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and NCP (SP) alliance. In several corporations, Sharad Pawar’s NCP-SP drew a blank, but won 12 seats in Bhivandi-Nizampur so that the tally reaches 15.
In Pune, the BJP won 96 seats, while the NCP bagged 20 seats and NCP (SP) managed to secure just three. In Pimpri Chinchwad, the BJP won 84 seats, while the NCP was relegated to the second spot, bagging 37 seats. The NCP (SP) could not win even a single seat there.
Also Read: BJP breaches BMC fortress, registers big win in Pune
The Congress emerged as the single largest party in Chandrapur, and said it will jointly be in power in 10 other corporations, but accused the BJP of winning on the basis of bogus voting and money distribution. It won elections to the Latur Municipal Corporation, bagging a clear majority with 43 seats in the 70-member body, leaving the BJP a distant second at 22.
Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) emerged as the dark horse in the civic polls, registering notable gains in Muslim-dominated wards across the state. Its former MP Imtiaz Jaleel said the party was set to win in 100 seats across the state and received strong support in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Dhule, Amravati, Jalna, Malegaon, and Parbhani, besides garnering a few seats in Mumbai.
As many as 19 independents also won from the 29 civic bodies, where elections were held after a gap of several years, with terms of most of them having ended between 2020 and 2023. Of these, nine fall in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), the most urbanised belt in India.
In the 151-member Nagpur civic body elections, the BJP got 102 seats, while the Congress got 34 seats.
Shrikant Pangarkar, an accused in the 2017 murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, was elected a corporator in the Jalna Municipal Corporation, winning the elections as an independent candidate.
The State Election Commission said the polling percentage in the 29 civic bodies was 54.77. There was no official statement from body on the remaining 35 seats till midnight.
With the BJP’s victory, the narrative of Mumbai politics has moved from the traditional identity-based ‘Marathi asmita’ to a mandate for the BJP’s plank of ‘vikas’ (development) and urban infrastructure.
Fadnavis, under whose leadership, the BJP emerged massively victorious, said he is a proud “Hindutvavadi”. “The soul of our work is Hindutva. We are proud of being Hindutvavadi. We can’t separate development and Hindutva. Today, our soul has taken us to the ordinary people. We do not believe in narrow-minded Hindutva. Our Hindutva is broad-minded, it is all-inclusive. Everyone who considers the Indian culture and tradition as their own, the Indian lifestyle as their own, irrespective of their reverence beliefs, they are all a part of our Hindutva definition,” he said.
The elections were held in the following municipal corporations: Mumbai, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Navi Mumbai, Vasai-Virar, Kalyan-Dombivli, Kolhapur, Nagpur, Solapur, Amravati, Akola, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune, Ulhasnagar, Thane, Chandrapur, Parbhani, Mira-Bhayandar, Nanded-Waghala, Panvel, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, Latur, Malegaon, Sangli-Miraj-Kupwad, Jalgaon, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Jalna and Ichalkaranji.
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