Mumbai, Jan. 17 -- After gaining 89 seats in BMC, the BJP seems ready to stake its claim to the city's mayoral position, thus bringing an end to (then undivided) Shiv Sena's regime in the country's richest municipal body. The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is one of the most intriguing episodes of city politics. The alliance, which began as a Hindutva plank way back in the 1990s, took on many avatars given the tumultuous nature of alliance politics, said Shiv Sena chronicler Prakash Akolkar on Friday. "The BJP made deep inroads into Maharashtra's heartland after it teamed up with the Shiv Sena. In the 1985 state assembly elections the BJP had won 13 assembly seats. It upped its tally to 122 in 2014, thanks to its alliance with the Shiv Sena," said Akolkar. He further said that despite its junior status in the saffron alliance, the BJP, while paying court to Matoshree, quietly worked on its expansion strategy and planned their poll strategy. Also, the party welded a robust team of grassroot workers and digital experts to woo the voters. The 1995 state assembly elections saw the Sena-BJP alliance wresting Maharashtra from the Congress on the Hindutva plank, and subsequently, Manohar Joshi, a trusted Thackeray lieutenant, became the chief minister. The Joshi government faced too many hurdles. Bal Thackeray, Sena supremo, would issue diktats at will and force the BJP leadership to follow him. "I am the remote control of this government," was his favourite line. But Pramod Mahajan, the BJP strategist, would skilfully persuade the Sena patriarch and convince him about the BJP's point of view. He would, so goes the story, often request Meenatai, Balasaheb's wife, to placate her husband, while he (Mahajan) slurped the Maharashtrian 'aamti' (curry) in their kitchen. Veterans recall how the BJP had to play second fiddle to Matoshree and how Mahajan would advise his party workers to swallow their pride and go soft on the Sena as the BJP needed Balasaheb's charisma and popularity to keep the Hindutva juggernaut going. "If you want Atal-ji (Atal Behari Vajpayee) to be the Prime Minister then you must learn to live with the Shiv Sena," he would tell angry partymen. While Sena-BJP equations faced their highs and lows, the Mumbai BJP bigwigs of those years - Ram Naik, Madhu Deolekar, Wamanrao Parab and Vedprakash Goyal, for instance - kept the home fires burning, trying to expand the party's vote base across Mumbai. "Urbanisation, migration and the city's fast-mutating demography improved the BJP's poll prospects in succeeding years," said Akolkar. The organisational spadework proved fruitful to the BJP in the 2026 BMC elections, said party watchers. "Our digital and back-room teams were working for nearly three months, collecting data and analysing it, while our party workers were meeting every strata of voters in the city," said Atul Bhatkhalkar, senior BJP MLA and party strategist. "For the BJP, election is a 24x7 exercise. While the Thackeray cousins took their own time to warm up to electioneering, Devendra Fadnavis travelled across the state for three weeks addressing four to five meetings a day. Deputy CM Eknath Shinde did the same," Akolkar added. The BJP's journey as Sena's ally was zigzagging, though. The party formally sealed a poll pact with the Shiv Sena in 1992. In the 1992 civic elections, the party's poll performance was lukewarm, however it leapfrogged to from 13 seats in 1992 to 26 seats in 1997. Thereafter, a tally of 28 seats in 2007 was bad news. It bagged 31 seats in the 2012 civic elections, a marginal rise. "Everything went on well under Pramod-ji's and Balasaheb's leadership. But the post-2000 leaders couldn't revive the magic of the 1990s," said a former BJP MP. The poll victory should please CM Devendra Fadnavis whose Mumbai credentials were questioned by MNS president Raj Thackeray. "What does Fadnavis know about Mumbai? He belongs to Nagpur," Raj said at a poll rally. Fadnavis personally monitored the party's poll campaign this time. "The poll results conclusively prove that Balasaheb Thackeray's politics of nativism, which catapulted him to political stardom in the 1970s, is no longer valid in present times," said BJP strategist Adwait Chavan. Meanwhile, the BJP's impressive tally in the 227-strong city hall, a clean sweep, sent grassroot party activists into raptures on Friday. "The Shiv Sena, divided or undivided, is now a thing of the past. The 35-year long journey has been traumatic," said senior Mumbai BJP functionary Niranjan Shetty. However, a section of the Mumbai BJP is a tad restless with the Shiv Sena (UBT) garnering 65 seats the BMC on the Marathi 'manoos' poll plank. The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance lost its relevance and raison de etre following Balasaheb Thackeray's death in 2012, said Akolkar. The Modi era set in two years later. The BJP no longer missed Balasaheb as it had found a larger-than-life hero in Modi. The 2026 BMC poll has finally brought the curtains down on one of Maharashtra's most intriguing and controversial political brotherhoods....