India, Jan. 16 -- When the votes are counted today, 68 seats spread over the city's Marathi pockets will decide which of the two Shiv Sena factions wrests the title of being the "real Shiv Sena"-Uddhav Thackeray's Sena (UBT) or Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena. In a direct fight in these 68 seats, polling day was the culmination of the fierce battle between the two, with Thackeray doing everything in his power to retain his last bastion and Shinde leaving no stone unturned to decimate him with the help of the BJP.

In the last elections, the undivided Shiv Sena had won 84 seats while the BJP got 82, leading to their partnership in the BMC. But following the split engineered by Shinde in 2022 and his subsequent alliance with the BJP, the deputy c...