Mahayuti sweeps Council polls, but BJP-Sena rift breaks into the open

The Mahayuti alliance all but swept the Maharashtra Legislative Council elections on Monday, winning 16 of the 17 seats at stake, including six elected unopposed earlier. Of the 11 seats that went to polling, the ruling alliance won 10.

Yet the lone defeat may prove the most politically significant.

On a day when Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde was celebrating a breakthrough in Delhi by securing the support of six rebel Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs, his party suffered an embarrassing setback in Nashik, where the official Mahayuti nominee, Narendra Darade of the Shiv Sena, was defeated by BJP rebel Gokul Gite.

The contrast was striking. While Shinde was expanding his footprint in national politics through what leaders in his camp have dubbed “Operation Tiger”, his own party failed to hold a seat allotted to it under the Mahayuti’s power-sharing arrangement.

Gite secured 357 votes against Darade’s 248, comfortably crossing the winning quota of 303 votes.

The Nashik seat had been allocated to the Shinde-led Sena as part of the alliance’s seat-sharing formula. Over the past several days, senior leaders from all three Mahayuti constituents had worked to defuse rebellions and avoid contests on seats earmarked for alliance candidates. In most places, the strategy succeeded. In Nashik, it did not.

Initially, both Gokul Gite and his brother Ganesh Gite had entered the fray. Ganesh later withdrew and, according to leaders involved in the negotiations, Gokul too had indicated he would step aside. With that assurance, attention shifted to resolving disputes elsewhere.

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The alliance managed to contain rebellions in other constituencies. In Jalgaon, rebel candidate Reshma Kale withdrew after intervention by senior leaders, clearing the way for BJP nominee Nandkishor Mahajan. In the Konkan local authorities constituency, Juili Dalvi, daughter of Shiv Sena MLA Mahendra Dalvi, also withdrew after her candidature triggered friction within the alliance. The episode had prompted public criticism from Dalvi, who indirectly targeted senior Sena leaders Bharat Gogawale and Vikas Gogawale.

Nashik, however, remained unresolved despite repeated efforts.

Senior BJP minister Girish Mahajan and Shiv Sena minister Uday Samant camped in the district and held multiple rounds of discussions with local leaders in an attempt to persuade Gokul Gite to withdraw. He stayed in the race.

Even though Gite publicly maintained that he would not actively campaign, he eventually defeated the alliance’s official candidate.

The defeat prompted an unusually blunt reaction from Darade.

“Everybody betrayed me except Eknath Shinde,” he said after the results, declining to identify those he believed had deserted him.

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Though he stopped short of naming individuals, the remark immediately fuelled speculation within Mahayuti ranks over whether the alliance’s votes had transferred as promised.

Darade’s son, Kunal, was more direct. He alleged that votes expected from alliance partners had not materialised despite repeated assurances.

According to him, the BJP controlled around 200 votes and the Shiv Sena around 170 in the electoral college, numbers that should have comfortably ensured Darade’s victory. The final tally, however, told a different story.

Kunal Darade also claimed that throughout the campaign, alliance leaders repeatedly assured them that Gokul Gite would withdraw and that no parallel effort would be mounted against the official nominee. Neither happened.

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No Mahayuti leader has publicly commented on the reasons behind the defeat. Within alliance circles, however, the result has revived questions over whether sections of the BJP’s local leadership were unhappy with Nashik being allotted to the Shinde-led Sena and whether the expected vote transfer never fully took place.

The MLC polls had already revealed strains within the ruling alliance during candidate selection. Seats such as Satara, Jalgaon and Konkan witnessed prolonged negotiations and intervention by senior leaders to contain local rivalries before consensus was achieved.

That makes the Nashik outcome particularly significant. It came on the very day Shinde strengthened his position in Delhi by increasing his party’s Lok Sabha strength from seven MPs to 13. But while Operation Tiger yielded gains against Sena (UBT), the Nashik result served as a reminder that Shinde’s challenges are no longer confined to the Opposition.

For all the triumphalism surrounding the Sena’s expansion in Parliament, the defeat exposed unresolved tensions within Mahayuti and suggested that, beneath the alliance’s electoral success, local rivalries remain very much alive.

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Who is Gokul Gite

The architect of the upset, Gokul Gite, is regarded as an influential figure in Nashik’s political landscape despite largely operating away from the spotlight.

He is the brother of former Nashik Standing Committee chairman Ganesh Gite and is believed to have played a key organisational role during Ganesh Gite’s Assembly election campaign on a Sharad Pawar-led NCP (SP) ticket.

Gite has also served two terms as a director of the Pimpalgaon APMC and is considered to have an extensive network among local elected representatives in the district.

Until now, he had remained largely outside frontline state politics. His victory on Monday, however, has turned him into a key player overnight and left Mahayuti leaders grappling with uncomfortable questions about the state of their alliance in Nashik.