The trends in Maharashtra politics have been ever-changing and very unpredictable over the past few years, and this is what attracts the nation’s attention to the state’s politics. Being the highest contributor to the national collection of Goods and Services Tax (GST), Maharashtra is clearly the most industrialised and urbanised among all the large states in India.

After the recently concluded municipal polls in 29 cities of the state, the most attention-worthy question now is: who will control cities like Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Nagpur? The results indicate that the political trend may again change in Maharashtra, and questions are being asked about whether the state is slowly moving from the politics of alliances to bipolar politics, with only two political forces, as opposed to six or seven earlier, being in the fray.

BJP’s calculated municipal strategy

The Bharatiya Janata Party adopted a very clever strategy in the recent municipal polls by entering seat-sharing deals with alliance partners where winning a majority was crucial, while fighting separately where the polls appeared a cakewalk for the BJP.

For instance, in Mumbai, the BJP was not too confident about how things would unfold in view of the Thackeray cousins uniting and entering into a seat-sharing agreement. Hence, it decided to have a seat-sharing arrangement with Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. However,........

© Free Press Journal