Seat-Share Deal 'Done', Thackeray Brother's Mumbai Reunion A Step Closer

The Thackeray family – regarded as the 'first family' in Mumbai political circles – took a step closer to a grand electoral reunion Monday morning, after sources said a seat-share agreement had finally been agreed for next month's Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation election.

Should the arrangement whispered to NDTV hold, it will mark the first time in 20 years the two biggest members of the Thackeray clan will contest an election on the same side as each other.

Sources within the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) said the Sena will contest 157 of the BMC's 227 seats and cousin Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena the other 70.

That leaves Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party – part of the Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadhi opposition alliance, with the Congress – without an independent share of seats.

Pawar's NCP will, instead, get 15 seats from Uddhav Thackeray's share, sources said.

The Congress, meanwhile, does not figure in this arrangement at all, a circumstance that some believe underlines tension within the MVA, particularly after the Thackeray brothers reunited.

Indeed, on Sunday a comment by the Shiv Sena (UBT)'s Anand Dubey raised eyebrows; the party spokesperson dismissed the Congress as 'irrelevant' in the context of Mumbai politics. "There is no need to take the Congress seriously in Mumbai. For the past 30 years, they consistently lost the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls… so what miracle will they perform in 2026?"

This was after the Congress' Sachin Sawant said an 'ideological divide' meant the party will contest next month's election on its own. "We are going to fight against any party that creates conflict in the name of religion, caste, region, or language…" Sawant told reporters in Mumbai.

And, also this morning, the party released its manifesto.

For decades the Sena – particularly under the leadership of founder and patriarch Bal Thackeray – was the undisputed power in Mumbai politics. Bal Thackeray died in 2012 but such was his legacy that even in 2017 – the last BMC election – the Sena was the single-largest party.

But the Shiv Sena from 2017 and the Shiv Sena of today are very different propositions, principally because there are now two parties after the Eknath Shinde-led split of 2022.

The January 2026 election will present another opportunity to both Sena camps to assert themselves as the true inheritors of Bal Thackeray's legacy. The first two rounds of that contest went to Shinde after wins in the 2024 election and in last week's pan-state local body polls.

In the latter the ruling Mahayuti – i.e., the BJP, the Shinde Sena, and the NCP faction led by Ajit Pawar, which broke from Sharad Pawar's side in 2023, in an almost identical manner to the Sena split – swept to victory. They won 207 of 288 seats, with the BJP claiming the majority – 117.