The much-anticipated municipal corporation elections will be held on January 15, with the results to be declared the next day, for 29 urban centres in Maharashtra.
The state's capital will get an elected mayor after three years, but a lot has changed since the city last voted. In 2017, Uddhav Thackeray was an important leader in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), both at the Centre and in the state; Raj Thackeray and Uddhav Thackeray were each other's primary foes, and Shiv Sena stood strong and united.
In the 2017 elections, the erstwhile united Shiv Sena won 84 corporator seats in the city. After the results, four independent corporators joined the party, taking the tally to 88, followed by the controversial induction of six corporators from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), raising the number to 94.
By the time the term ended, by-elections were also held, and the total strength of Shiv Sena in the city stood at 99 corporators. Of these, 44 former corporators have since joined Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, while 55 remain with the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT).
How the ruling camp lost its civic advantage
The last time Mumbai went to the polls, there was one united Shiv Sena, Uddhav Thackeray was an ally of the governments in power, both at the state and the Centre, and the Thackeray cousins were bitter political rivals. The picture in 2026, however, looks dramatically different. A massive faction broke away from the Sena and went on to claim the party's name and symbol, Uddhav and Raj Thackeray have shown signs of political camaraderie, and the BJP is in no mood to relinquish ground in the civic body as it did in 2017.
Following the 2017 results, the erstwhile united Shiv Sena had emerged as the single largest party with 84 corporators, but its main challenger, the BJP, was close behind with 82 corporators. Then state revenue minister Chandrakant Patil had underlined that the Sena-BJP relationship went "far beyond elections," striking a conciliatory note towards the Sena despite the narrow gap.
The Sena-BJP alliance eventually came to power in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in 2017. The political script changed in 2019, when Uddhav Thackeray became the BJP's principal opponent and later, in 2022, when the Shiv Sena split, with Eknath Shinde walking away with a majority of the party's MLAs.
Why did the city not vote in 2022?
The civic elections, due in 2022 after the five-year term of the BMC ended, were repeatedly postponed because of prolonged legal and political hurdles. A Supreme Court ruling made it mandatory for states to complete an empirical "triple test" before providing OBC reservations in local body polls, while Mumbai also saw disputes over ward delimitation, including an increase and subsequent rollback in the number of corporator seats. With reservation norms and ward boundaries under litigation and courts maintaining status quo at different stages, the State Election Commission said it was not legally possible to notify the elections, leaving the BMC under an administrator.
Operation Tiger
While orchestrating the split, Eknath Shinde initially drew away MLAs from Uddhav Thackeray. It was only a matter of time before the impact was felt in the civic body as well. A steady stream of former corporators from the 2017 batch crossed over, significantly weakening UBT's organisational base within the BMC and strengthening the Shinde-led Sena's claim as the political inheritor of the party.
Following the setback in the 2024 Assembly elections, Shinde publicly announced 'Operation Tiger', aimed at further eroding Shiv Sena (UBT) by inducting grassroots leaders into the ruling Sena, a strategy that translated into fresh corporator defections.
On the day the election schedule was announced, Tejasvi Ghosalkar, another former UBT corporator, joined the BJP in the presence of senior leaders.
"There is a lot for us to say too, but we won't say it now," Aditya Thackeray said, responding to questions on the continuing exodus.
