Mumbai, Jan. 17 -- Maharashtra's chief minister Devendra Fadnavis led the three-party Mahayuti alliance to an emphatic win in the crucial civic polls in Maharashtra on Friday, sweeping in 23 of the 29 municipal corporations that went to polls, including in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, India's richest civic body. Friday's results are a boost for the BJP which, within 19 months of the drubbing it got in the Lok Sabha 2024 elections, has made an impressive comeback to lead a "triple-engine government" in the majority of Maharashtra's cities, including in the industrial belt of Mumbai-Nashik-Pune which contributes to 7% India's GDP. "The dynamic people of the state blessed the NDA's agenda of pro-people good governance! The results of various municipal corporation elections indicate that NDA's bond with the people of Maharashtra has further deepened.This is a vote to add momentum to progress and celebrate the glorious culture the state is associated with," posted PM Modi on X after the results. In Mumbai, where the electoral fight was concentrated on the nativist pitch of the Marathi manoos overriding the everyday civic concerns of Mumbai's 23 million people, the BJP and Shiv Sena combined won 118 of the BMC's 227 seats with the BJP winning 89 of the 137 seats it contested. If the BMC polls were also a verdict on which of the two Shiv Senas mattered more to Mumbaikars, neither side would be particularly happy with the outcome. Eknath Shinde, who contested 90 seats in alliance with the BJP, won 29 of them while Uddhav Thackeray who contested 163 seats secured 65, most of which lie in the Marathi heartland of south-central Mumbai, stretching from Dadar to Byculla. For Thackeray, following the 2022 split in the Shiv Sena and the toppling of his government, Friday's result will particularly poignant. 2026 is Bal Thackeray's birth centennial year and it will be the first time in 25 years that a Thackeray-led party will not be leading the BMC. Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut said that most of 56 corporators who had won as Shiv Sena corporators in 2017 and who switched sides to join Eknath Shinde lost the polls. Raj Thackeray's MNS which formed an alliance with Shiv Sena (UBT) for the first time, did not cross double digits in Mumbai. The Mahayuti also fared well in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region which comprises 8 municipal corporations in addition to the BMC. The region accounts for over 20% of the state's population. At the time of going to press the Mahayuti had a clear lead in Thane, Kalyan-Dombivali, Palghar, Navi Mumbai, Mira-Bhayandar and Ulhasnagar. In the remaining two of the MMR municipal councils, local strongman Hitendra Thakur's Bahujan Vikas Aghadi had won in Vasai-Virar while the Congress won in Bhiwandi. For the Congress, other than the win in Bhiwandi, the party also won in Latur under the leadership of Vilasrao Deshmukh's son Amit, and in Chandrapur where senior leader Vijay Wadettiwar played a key role. In Parbhani, the party won in alliance with the Shiv Sena (UBT). In Mumbai, however, the Congress slipped to its lowest-ever tally in the BMC. The story of its steady erosion in India's city of dreams can be read in the fact that the party which won 111 seats in 1992 slipped to 24 seats in the BMC in 2026. Ahead of the polls, the Congress decided to dump the Shiv Sena (UBT) with whom it had fought the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections in 2024, to go with Prakash Ambedkar's Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi instead. The VBA failed to open its account in Mumbai. Such has been the BJP's dominance in these polls that even its ally, Ajit Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party, failed to independently win a single municipal corporation including in Pimpri-Chinchwad which it had won the last time and where the two NCPs contested together. However, in Ahilyanagar, formerly Ahmednagar, the party had a strong showing and won comfortably in alliance with the BJP. The outcome for the two NCPs in western Maharashtra, their traditional stronghold, has led to speculation of a merger between the two factions to stay relevant in state politics in the years ahead. The credit for the BJP's strong showing rests with Devendra Fadnavis who led the campaign from the front, and has emerged as a pan-Maharashtra leader after Sharad Pawar. None of the BJP's national leaders stepped in for canvassing -- partly because they did not want to give the opposition a chance to say that Maharashtra's politics was being dictated by Delhi leadership. After the humiliation of 2019 when the MVA cobbled together, Fadnavis bided his time, effecting deadly blows eventually on the Shiv Sena and the NCP, leaving the two stable and strong regional parties considerably weakened. "It is the success of the development agenda our government at state and the national level. The people have responded to our development call and trusted on our vision of upgrading the cities. The BJP believes in inclusive Hindutva and it is accepted by the electorate," he said on Friday evening. In addition to Mumbai, the BJP also strengthened its base in Vidarbha, winning three of the four municipal corporations of Nagpur, Amravati and Akola with a comfortable margin. Outside of Mumbai, the BJP and the Shiv Sena contested together in 4 municipal corporations while in 5 others they fought together with the NCP. The cumulative voter turnout to these corporations was 54.77%, significantly lower than the last time's cumulative turnout of 58.50% when polls to these civic bodies were held between February 2015 and December 2018. In Mumbai too voting percentage dropped from 55.53% in 2017 to 52.94% in 2026....