What the verdict means for...

What do Maharashtra local body poll results imply for the state’s top leaders? Shailesh Gaikwad breaks it down:

- 

DEVENDRA FADNAVIS, 55 MAHARASHTRA CHIEF MINISTER The BJP’s sweeping win in the municipal body polls in Maharashtra, including the prestigious BMC, where it ended the Thackeray dominance of India’s richest civic body after 25 years, is to Devendra Fadnavis's credit.

For long, the chief minister, now serving his second term, has been labelled as the man from Nagpur. But Friday's showing where the BJP won 23 of the 29 municipal corporations— a few of them in alliance with the Shiv Sena and the NCP—points to his emergence as a pan-Maharashtra leader, perhaps the first such after Sharad Pawar.

Fadnavis, left in the lurch after the formation of the MVA government in 2019, fundamentally altered Maharashtra’s politics when he engineered a split in Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, two prominent regional parties in the country. In 2022 after the Sena split, Fadnavis even agreed to serve as Eknath Shinde’s deputy despite the BJP having more seats. A poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls followed. But the BJP’s unexpectedly strong showing in the December 2024 Assembly polls, ensured his return as chief minister.

In these civic polls he led the campaign from the front, countering the Thackerays’ nativist rhetoric with a pro-development pitch and welfare schemes. Friday's win should also put BJP’s allies NCP (AP) and Shiv Sena on guard. Devendra Fadnavis is clearly a man on a mission.

UDDHAV THACKERAY, 65 SHIV SENA (UBT) CHIEF