Maharashtra Assembly elections | What will be the fate of key regional parties NCP and Shiv Sena? Premium

Maharashtra elections set stage for six-way fight between Mahayuti and Maha Vikas Aghadi, fate of Shiv Sena and NCP post-polls hangs in balance.

Story so far: The stage for Maharashtra elections is set with the six-way fight between the Mahayuti and Maha Vikas Aghadi on November 20. In an unprecedented move, the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will face their own party factions in the poll fray. The fragmentation of these regional political forces with respect to seats and vote share is an inevitable outcome of these polls. However, what would their fate be post-polls is a debate raging among political analysts in the State. 

The first battle between the two Shiv Sena factions and the two NCPs was fought in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Shiv Sena faceoff 

Armed with the iconic ‘bow and arrow’ symbol and the party name ‘Shiv Sena’, Eknath Shinde’s faction won seven of the 15 seats it contested and polled 12.95% of the votes. In all of its winning seats – Buldhana, Aurangabad, Kalyan, Thane, Mumbai North-West, Maval and Hatkanangale, it was in a direct fight with its rival faction, Sena (UBT), led by Uddhav Thackeray.  

In comparison, Sena (UBT) won nine seats of the 22 seats it contested – scoring a lower strike rate of 40.91% compared to Sena’s 46.67%. Of the nine seats it won, six were against Shiv Sena - Mumbai South Central, Mumbai South, Yavatmal-Washim, Shirdi, Nashik and Hingoli. Sena (UBT) polled 16.72% of the total votes. As a result, the two Senas combinedly won 16 seats and polled 29.67% of the votes. In 2019, the undivided Shiv Sena won 18 seats and polled 23.5% of the votes. 

These figures show that while Shinde’s Sena faction has outperformed the Thackeray faction in a direct face-off, and shown a better strike-rate, the voteshare of the two Senas has improved. The undivided Sena’s chief – Uddhav Thackeray – who campaigned for the Congress, has found support among minorities and anti-BJP voters apart from Thackeray family loyalists, which has increased his faction’s voteshare. 

“In the past two years, Sena (UBT) has moved from the so-called fanatic Hindutva of Balasaheb Tahckeray to a more non-Brahminical Hindutva of Prabodhankar Thackeray (Bal Thackeray’s father). Sena (UBT) is trying to expand its voterbase. Because there is better understanding between the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) parties, if Uddhav Thackeray, his son and cadre put across their agenda better, rather than just lamenting that they (Shinde and his MLAs) took away his party, then Sena (UBT) electoral support base will have new clientele,” opines Dr. Deepak Pawar, Head of the Civics and Politics department at Mumbai University.