Uddhav Thackeray has lost six of his nine MPs from the Lok Sabha to Eknath Shinde’s faction of Shiv Sena. This was the second major blow for Uddhav after losing both the government and the party to Shinde in 2022. Shinde was the visible instrument of the attack on Uddhav, but it is no secret that the BJP’s backing made it possible. It is not just Thackeray’s camp: the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Sharad Pawar are also struggling to withstand the might and manoeuvers of the BJP in Maharashtra. All of this is producing a scenario in which the BJP is acquiring a hegemonic upper hand in Maharashtra’s politics—similar to what it has long held in neighbouring Gujarat.

When they publicly left Uddhav, his MPs said they were joining the Shinde faction for the “development of their constituencies". In effect, this amounted to an admission: constituencies held by opposition MPs were not receiving adequate State funding for public works. This is a direct consequence of ruling-party incumbency weaponised against rivals. The voters in those constituencies were being deprived of basic developmental entitlements because they had not elected a representative from the party in power at the State or national level.

“This one explanation by the MPs for switching sides is enough to show how the BJP and its alliance partners work. They stopped development in opposition MPs’ or MLAs’ constituencies. Voters constantly demand roads, water, and basic infrastructure. The MP or MLA comes under pressure and switches sides to join the government. This is completely anti-democratic,” said the veteran social activist Ulka Mahajan.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP-led Mahayuti could win only 17 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats. The opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won 31. Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena took 9 seats, the NCP (Sharad Pawar) 8, the Congress 13, and one Independent who subsequently joined the Congress. On the other side, the BJP won 9 seats, Shinde’s Shiv Sena 7, and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) 1. The MVA had a clear upper hand.

Four months later, in the Assembly elections, the picture reversed sharply. The BJP-led Mahayuti won 235 of 288 seats, with the BJP alone winning 132, Shinde’s Shiv Sena 57, and NCP (Ajit Pawar faction) 41, with allied Independents making up the remaining seats. The MVA was routed—Uddhav’s party won 20 seats, the Congress 16, and Sharad Pawar’s NCP 10. With the PWP, the CPI(M), and the Samajwadi Party’s MLAs, the MVA tally reached around 50.

The Mahayuti’s dominance of State and central governments has allowed it to consolidate at the grassroots. In the 2025–26 local body elections, the BJP-led alliance won 24 of 28 municipal corporations; the MVA was reduced to three, with one going to the local Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA). Of 12 Zilla Parishads that went to the polls, the Mahayuti won 11 and the MVA held just one. In the Legislative Council elections held on June 18, results declared on June 22 showed the Mahayuti winning 16 of 17 seats. The one independent who won also subsequently joined Shinde’s Shiv Sena, leaving the MVA without a single seat across the entire State. In municipal council elections, the Mahayuti won 236 of 288 councils; the MVA could secure only 52.

Within the Mahayuti, the BJP is the dominant force by a wide margin. Of the 24 municipal corporations the alliance won, BJP took 21—including Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nanded, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and Nagpur. Of 252 municipal councils won by the Mahayuti, the BJP has taken over 160. The BJP is, by any measure, the undisputed leading party in Maharashtra today.

Operation Opposition

As the BJP tightens its hold, it has begun what observers are calling an “Operation Opposition". The party’s central leadership in Delhi is well aware that Eknath Shinde may have friction with State-level BJP leaders but will not be able to challenge the party’s central command beyond a point. The BJP is using Shinde as a front to further hollow out the opposition. Uddhav Thackeray losing six of his nine Lok Sabha MPs is, in this reading, the opening move.

Rather than absorbing these MPs directly into the BJP, the party’s central leadership has taken an indirect route, routing them through the Shinde faction. A similar approach has been visible in West Bengal, where rebel Trinamool Congress MPs broke away to merge with the lesser-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).

There is now speculation that the next round of departures will involve Sharad Pawar’s eight Lok Sabha MPs, with five or six reportedly expected to shift to the Shinde camp. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray made a pointed claim about this “parking” of MPs. “The BJP is the largest party in Delhi as well as Mumbai. Then why are these MPs joining the Eknath Shinde party? Why is the BJP sending them to him and not taking them directly into its fold? Because Amit Shah wants to be the next Prime Minister and here he is playing it safe. He wants to show the BJP that the MPs they will need to secure a majority will support Shah in the event of choosing a PM,” Raj Thackeray said at an MNS function in Mumbai on June 20.

Weakening the opposition could be part of a longer calculation. By targeting opposition figures with an eye on the next Lok Sabha cycle, the BJP appears to be engineering an asymmetric contest. “Lok Sabha constituencies are large. Parties need a strong candidate with monetary support and a network across the constituency. If the opposition loses its known faces, who will their candidates be? The battle will be unequal even before it starts,” said the journalist Vijay Chormare from Kolhapur.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Congress candidates in Indore and Surat withdrew their nominations; the BJP won both seats unopposed. A similar pattern played out in Gujarat during recent local body elections, where the BJP won 717 seats across local bodies without a contest. In Maharashtra, the experiment has already been tried: during the municipal council elections of February 2026, the Mahayuti won 68 seats unopposed. “Looking at the sliding of democracy in Maharashtra, nobody can guarantee that the Surat or Indore experiment of 2024 won’t be repeated in Maharashtra in 2029. When the opposition has no strong contender on the ground, it will put up a nominal fight. And a nominal candidate is easy to lure into withdrawal,” said Shrimant Mane, editor of Lokmat’s Nagpur edition.

The Gujarat comparison

The BJP has governed Gujarat without interruption since 1995. Over three decades, the party has built a vote share of more than 50 per cent in local body elections and over 40 per cent in Assembly and Lok Sabha contests. Congress leaders in Gujarat have grown demoralised and crossed over in large numbers in recent years. The same trend is now visible in Maharashtra. It is not only sitting MPs who are shifting: the Mahayuti has opened its doors to defeated MVA Assembly candidates as well.

Around 64 MVA candidates from the November 2024 Assembly elections have since joined the ruling bloc—30 with the BJP, 25 with Shinde’s Shiv Sena, and 9 with the NCP under Sunetra Pawar, Ajit Pawar’s widow, who has since assumed the party leadership. Beyond these, hundreds of Zilla Parishad and Block Committee-level workers have also moved to the ruling parties.

The apparent competition to poach bloc- and Assembly-level leaders is nominally between the BJP and Shinde. But Shinde faces real legal and political constraints. His claim to the Shiv Sena name and the party’s bow-and-arrow symbol is still before the Supreme Court. He cannot take on the BJP beyond a limit, and if the court rules against him, he would have little choice but to merge his faction with the BJP. The BJP’s central and State leadership understands this well. That is why, for now, it allows Shinde to absorb as many opposition leaders as he can—the trump card remains with the BJP. In the meantime, the opposition is being uprooted from its base.

Yet there are voices in Maharashtra’s political corridors who argue the State will not yield to the BJP the way Gujarat has. The two States are fundamentally different in their political character. Gujarat is more or less politically homogenous; Maharashtra is not. The BJP consolidated Gujarat under Narendra Modi’s twelve-plus years as Chief Minister—giving the party an undisputed pan-state face. Devendra Fadnavis is the BJP’s leading figure in Maharashtra, but he has not yet acquired that reach across the State’s diverse regions. Gujarat was also a two-party State for a long time, with the BJP and the Congress as the primary contestants. Maharashtra’s political map is far more fractured, with multiple parties holding regional influence.

“The biggest challenge for the BJP in Maharashtra is ideological. Maharashtra is an essentially progressive State. The BJP is trying hard to reshape its political character by pushing its ideological family organisations into all sections of life—but it is facing strong resistance everywhere, from literature to cinema, from language to folk arts. The RSS and BJP’s version of Maharashtra is being constantly challenged,” said the journalist Jaydeo Dole.

Maharashtra was the last major Congress stronghold, breached substantially in 2014 and dismantled in 2024. Since then, the BJP has been aggressively positioning itself as the State’s only decisive political voice. From defections to party splits, the methods look less like improvisation and more like a plan with a long horizon. The BJP’s most consequential success right now may be simpler than any of that: there is no opposition leader capable of mounting a comprehensive challenge. That, more than anything else, is what is making the saffron alliance stronger in Maharashtra.

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