India, Dec. 25 -- As Raj and Uddhav Thackeray announced their alliance ahead of the upcoming BMC polls, Shiv Sainiks who have been with the party since its early years felt that the Sena's long and bitter internal conflict had come full circle. After fissures became visible in the then-undivided Sena in the late 1990s (later culminating in Raj's exit and the formation of the MNS in 2006), few imagined that the Thackeray cousins would one day enter an alliance born out of necessity rather than ambition. While widely celebrated as a family reunion, this alliance is actually a desperate bid for political survival and relevance for both Uddhav's Sena and Raj's MNS. It marks the last viable political opening for Raj Thackeray to revive a shrinking party and for Uddhav Thackeray to rebuild a fractured Sena in the aftermath of the Eknath Shinde split and the BJP's aggressive encroachment into the Sena's traditional political base. What gives this alliance its charge, however, is not merely the ideological convergence over the issue of nativism and Marathi manoos but the value of disruption it brings to the table. Long dismissed as a political spoiler with diminishing electoral returns, Raj's true political worth has always rested on his capacity to generate friction, unsettle equations and compel dominant actors to react rather than merely govern. For Sena (UBT), which is grappling with its biggest crisis, this nuisance value is a potential resource to take on the power and supremacy commanded by the BJP-Shinde combine. The erstwhile Shiv Sena thrived less as a conventional electoral machine and more as a force of grounded, everyday politics - occupying streets, mediating local conflicts, asserting cultural claims and keeping opponents perpetually off balance. Its very emergence was rooted in a make-or-break street appeal. Over time, particularly after Uddhav Thackeray assumed leadership of the party, this mode of politics gradually shifted - both by his personality and way of working and by the compulsions of coalition governance and electoral pragmatism. Raj's politics, by contrast, has always remained anchored in disruption. Whether through aggressive rhetoric, sharp cultural signalling, viral video appeals or symbolic street mobilisation, he has consistently demonstrated an ability to punch above his electoral weight. Even at its weakest, the MNS has altered campaign narratives and public discourse, particularly on questions of Marathi identity. In the current scenario where the all-powerful BJP-Shinde duo rely heavily on monetary resources, power and divisive communal campaigns, Uddhav-led Sena's managerial style of working and moral legitimacy may do little to unsettle the hegemonic project. The Raj-Uddhav alliance offers what the Marathi manoos in Mumbai is actively craving - a politics of confrontation at a moment when the city's urban landscape is being reconfigured by a new political economy, driven by business, builders and political interests dominated by Gujarati-Marwadi and other non-Marathi actors, a shift actively enabled and consolidated by the BJP-Shinde combine. Raj's aggressive stance against non-Maharashtrians in Mumbai, combined with Uddhav's constant reiteration of 'building an alliance to disrupt the powers in Delhi,' can be a great consolidator of Marathi votes if leveraged tactfully. But it can also pose a challenge to the new social engineering by Uddhav post 2019, where he appealed to non-Maharashtrians, Muslims and Dalits in his fight against BJP. An analysis of successive BMC elections highlights both the scale and the limits of the challenge the two parties posed to each other. In its maiden outing in 2007, the MNS won seven seats, finished second in 16, and placed third in 82 seats. In the same election, the Sena stood second in 47 wards, with the MNS finishing third in 13 of them. Overall, the MNS gave the Sena a close contest in at least 59 seats, and in eight wards the combined Sena-MNS vote share exceeded that of the winning candidate, highlighting the electoral cost of fragmentation within the Marathi vote. The MNS tally rose sharply to 28 seats in 2012. That year, the party finished second in 56 seats and third in around 111 seats. It performed particularly well in central Mumbai's Marathi belt, capturing all seven wards in the Matunga-Mahim-Dadar-Prabhadevi stretch, areas long-regarded as Sena bastions. This momentum, however, could not be sustained. In 2017, the MNS won only seven seats, six of whose corporators later joined the Shiv Sena, and finished second in just 12 wards. The undivided Sena largely retained its central Mumbai strongholds, winning 11 of 13 seats. While the MNS had posed a serious challenge in the stretch in 2012, it failed to secure a single seat there in 2017. The highest vote share for MNS in the BMC polls was in 2012 (20.58%) as the party had contested in 223 seats. For the Uddhav-led Sena, reclaiming the 'original Shiv Sena as the true messiah of Marathi manoos' messaging may gain strength with Raj's entry in Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali and Nashik. The Raj-Uddhav alliance may currently seem like a political spectacle steeped in nostalgia, emotion and the grammar of family politics. By itself, this may not be enough to dismantle the formidable electoral machinery that the BJP-Shinde combine has constructed through money power, institutional capture and an expansive patronage network. While the Uddhav-led Sena is struggling to reclaim its lost space, Raj is significantly struggling to find a consistent narrative over the last few years. Marathi identity, Hindutva politics, pro-development and anti-migrant- he seems to have tried it all without much electoral success. Yet, we cannot fully dismiss the alliance because if leveraged strategically, this partnership carries a rare disruptive capacity, one that neither leader is currently able to muster alone. In the end, it underlines the space that Marathi and Marathi manoos still holds in the politics of the metropolis....