Daijiworld Media Network – Mumbai

Mumbai, Jan 17: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) registered a historic victory in Maharashtra’s civic body elections on Friday, emerging as the single-largest party in Mumbai while the Congress suffered its worst-ever performance.

According to data released by the State Election Commission at 10.30 pm, the BJP won 1,372 seats across 29 municipal corporations in the state. The Shiv Sena finished second with 394 seats, followed by the Congress with 315 seats, while the Shiv Sena (UBT) secured 149 seats.

In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the BJP, along with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, ended the nearly three-decade-long dominance of the undivided Shiv Sena led by the Thackeray family. The Congress, meanwhile, is expected to win only 22 seats in the 227-member BMC, marking its poorest showing in the civic body’s history.

The BJP also posted a decisive win in Pune, dealing a major blow to the alliance of the Nationalist Congress Party factions led by Sharad Pawar and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar. The results indicated that recent political reconciliations involving the Thackerays and the Pawars failed to make a significant electoral impact.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the BJP-led Mahayuti alliance was set to form administrations in 25 of the 29 municipal corporations in the state. Addressing party workers in south Mumbai, he termed the results a clear mandate for the alliance’s governance model.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked voters for the emphatic victory, saying the people of Maharashtra had endorsed the NDA’s agenda. “The dynamic people of the state bless the NDA’s agenda of pro-people good governance,” Modi said in a post on X.