The Maharashtra assembly election on 20 November provides a climax to a political drama that began five years ago, when, in the aftermath of the last election, the Shiv Sena broke an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and joined hands with its longtime rivals, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, to form the Maha Vikas Aghadi. The MVA government subsequently collapsed, when over two-thirds of the Sena’s legislature party—the threshold specified in the Constitution (Fifty-Second Amendment) Act for differentiating between defections and a party split—extended support to the BJP. The party’s president, Uddhav Thackeray, resigned as chief minister, and the leader of the rebels, Eknath Shinde, took over. Several politicians alleged that the BJP had used the threat of investigations in order to induce many legislators to rebel.
The Shinde faction retained the rights to the party name and symbol, a bow and arrow, while the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) was allotted a flaming torch as its electoral symbol. During the 2024 general election, candidates from the two factions faced off in 13 Lok Sabha seats, of which the SS(UBT) won seven. The assembly election features 49 such contests, accounting for a sixth of all constituencies. As Thackeray and Shinde fight over the Sena’s legacy, the battle lines seem to reflect the vertical nature of the split, with the elected representatives who joined Shinde’s rebellion, many of whom have strong support bases of their own, facing a cadre-driven SS(UBT) that continues to control most of the undivided party’s widespread system of shakhas—branches. The shakha system involves empowering local party offices in each locality, tasked with grassroots mobilisation and outreach. This battle is most intense in Mumbai, where the two parties are up against each other in 11 of the 36 constituencies, and especially in the Sena strongholds of Mahim and Worli.
“Balasaheb Thackeray’s soul resides here,” a local SS(UBT) leader told me at the Mahim party office, referring to Uddhav’s father, the founder of the Shiv Sena. The Mahim constituency, in many ways, symbolises the struggle of the two factions to claim the legacy of Bal Thackeray. The SS(UBT) has retained control of Sena Bhawan, the headquarters of the undivided party, which is located in the suburb. The constituency also includes the neighbourhoods of Prabhadevi and Dadar—the latter is the site of Shivaji Park, a ground that has memorials to Bal Thackeray and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, as well as Chaityabhoomi, the final resting place of BR Ambedkar. The Shiv Sena has fielded the two-term incumbent, Sada Sarvankar, while the SS(UBT) has nominated the former shakha leader Mahesh Sawant.
The undivided Shiv Sena won Mahim in six of the last seven assembly elections, dating back to 1990. The lone exception was 2009, when it voted for the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which emerged out of the last big Sena split, three years earlier. Led by Bal Thackeray’s nephew Raj, the MNS narrowly lost Mahim in 2014, despite the BJP and Sena contesting separately before coming back together after the election. It improved its vote share in 2019 but lost by a bigger margin. This time, Raj’s son Amit is the MNS candidate.