Breaking the nearly three-decade-old dominance of the undivided Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday emerged as the single largest party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections and also registered a sweeping victory in Pune, dealing a severe blow to the alliance of rival Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) factions.
According to trends and early results, the BJP-led alliance is set to bag around 125 of the 227 seats in the BMC, India’s richest civic body, which has a massive budget of Rs 74,427 crore for 2025–26. The counting of votes for elections to Mumbai and 28 other municipal corporations was held on Friday, a day after polling recorded a turnout of 54.77 per cent.
With a strong performance by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena as well, the BJP is now firmly in the driver’s seat to form the next dispensation in the cash-rich Mumbai civic body.
The high-stakes BMC battle saw Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray reunite after nearly two decades in a bid to reclaim Mumbai’s civic fortress, but the results so far have dashed their hopes.
In Pune and neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporation elections, the BJP is heading towards a massive victory, far ahead of the NCP and NCP (SP) alliance.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has emerged as the central figure of the BJP’s sweeping success, with the party under his leadership surpassing its previous best performance of 82 seats in the 2017 BMC elections. The success of the BJP’s ‘Mission Mumbai’ has now firmly established the party as the dominant political force in the country’s financial capital.
The results mark a major shift in Mumbai’s political landscape. For decades, the BMC was considered the invincible stronghold of the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena. With the BJP’s breakthrough, the political narrative in Mumbai appears to have moved from identity-based ‘Marathi asmita’ to a mandate centred on ‘vikas’ (development) and urban infrastructure.
Maharashtra minister and BJP leader Nitesh Rane said the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance’s performance reflected a clear endorsement of its campaign plank. “Jo Hindu ki baat karega, woh Maharashtra pe raj karega (Those who speak for Hindu interests will rule Maharashtra),” Rane posted on X.
In Nagpur, the home turf of Chief Minister Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, trends indicated a near-repeat of the 2017 results, with the BJP on course to surpass its earlier tally of 108 seats in the 151-member Nagpur Municipal Corporation, while the Congress struggled to make major inroads despite an aggressive campaign.
However, the Congress scored a notable victory in Latur, winning a clear majority with over 40 seats in the 70-member municipal corporation and pushing the BJP to a distant second place.
In Jalna, Shrikant Pangarkar, an accused in the 2017 murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh, was elected as a corporator after winning as an independent candidate.
The civic elections were held on January 15 after a gap of several years, as the terms of most municipal corporations had ended between 2020 and 2023. Of the 29 municipal corporations that went to polls, nine are in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), India’s most urbanised belt.
Voting took place in 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.
