Maharashtra MLC Polls Blame Game Explained: Why BJP and Shiv Sena Are Pointing Fingers After Winning Just 2 of 5 Seats
Key Takeaways
- The opposition MVA won 3 of the 5 Maharashtra Legislative Council seats polled on 23 October 2026, while the ruling Mahayuti won 2, with results declared on 29 October.
- The BJP's Navnath Ban blamed the Shiv Sena for non-cooperation in Pune and Nagpur, including last-minute support for Sachin Sanap in Pune and campaigning against the NCP in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar.
- The Shiv Sena replied that seat-sharing coordination was lacking from day one and accused the BJP of unfair seat distribution and failing to work honestly for its allies.
- The Nagpur Graduates' loss stung most because Nagpur is the home turf of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Nitin Gadkari and houses the RSS headquarters, despite Fadnavis campaigning extensively there.
- Five council seats do not change who governs Maharashtra, but the open blame game puts the Mahayuti's coordination under scrutiny before the next round of elections.
A blame game has broken out inside Maharashtra's ruling Mahayuti alliance after the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won three of the five Legislative Council seats that went to the polls on 23 October 2026, with results declared on Thursday, 29 October 2026. The BJP and its ally, the Shiv Sena led by Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, have publicly accused each other of costing the alliance a better result, turning a small council election into a fresh test of coordination inside the state government.
The result itself is narrow in numbers but loud in politics. The Mahayuti won two seats and the MVA won three. Both sides agree on one thing: had the alliance partners worked together, they say, all five seats could have been won. They disagree entirely on whose fault it was that they did not.
What happened: the results in five seats
Five Maharashtra Legislative Council seats went to the polls on Friday, 23 October 2026: three Graduates' constituencies (Pune Division, Nagpur Division and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Division) and two Teachers' constituencies (Pune Division and Amravati Division). These are special constituencies of the upper house in which the voters are registered graduates and registered teachers, not the general public, so the contests are fought over a smaller, more organised electorate of educated voters.
The final tally, as reported by The Hindu, the Deccan Herald and the New Indian Express, was: MVA three, Mahayuti two. The MVA's three seats came from Sharad Pawar's NCP (SP), which won two, and the Congress, which won one. The Mahayuti's two seats were split one each between the BJP and the Shiv Sena. The NCP led by Sunetra Pawar, part of the ruling alliance, failed to retain the one seat it had been allotted, and Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT) did not win any seat.
Seat by seat, the results were as follows. In the Pune Graduates' constituency, NCP (SP) candidate Harshada Deshmukh-Jadhav defeated the BJP's Smita Jadhav. In the Nagpur Graduates' constituency, sitting Congress MLC Abhijit Wanjari defeated the BJP's Sudhakar Kohale. In the Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Graduates' constituency, NCP (SP) candidate Dr Pratapsinh Patil defeated sitting NCP candidate Satish Chavan. On the Mahayuti side, the BJP's Kaustubh Gawade won the Pune Teachers' constituency, defeating Shiv Sena-backed candidate Sachin Sanap, while the Shiv Sena's Kiran Sarnaik won the Amravati Teachers' constituency, defeating the Congress's Aditi Pohre.
Why Nagpur stung the most
Of the five results, the Nagpur Graduates' defeat has drawn the most attention, because Nagpur is the political home turf of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari, and the city houses the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's ideological parent organisation. Fadnavis had campaigned extensively for the BJP candidate, Sudhakar Kohale, according to the Deccan Herald's report, yet the sitting Congress MLC held the seat.
That context is why the result is being read as more than a local loss. Graduates' and teachers' constituencies are often treated as bellwethers of opinion among educated, organised voters, and a defeat in Nagpur, of all places, is difficult for the BJP to dismiss as a routine upset. It is also why the blame game began within hours of the results being declared, rather than after a cooling-off period.
What the BJP is accusing the Shiv Sena of
Maharashtra BJP spokesperson Navnath Ban publicly criticised the Shinde-led Shiv Sena on social media on 29 October 2026, arguing that the alliance could have performed significantly better had all its constituents worked together. His specific charges, as reported by The Hindu, were that the Shiv Sena did not provide the expected cooperation in Pune and Nagpur, and that its actions directly hurt alliance candidates.
In Pune, Ban said, the Shiv Sena extended support to Sachin Sanap at the eleventh hour in the teachers' constituency, dealing a blow to the unity of the Mahayuti alliance itself. He argued that the votes the Sena received there were not votes that went to the BJP in the graduates' election, and that by pursuing one seat in Pune, the Shiv Sena put its allies in difficulty and cost the alliance an opportunity to win three seats. In Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Ban added, Shiv Sena minister Abdul Sattar went so far as to campaign directly against the Nationalist Congress Party, which also had an impact on the result.
Ban's broader point was about coalition discipline: partners, he maintained, should not undermine one another's candidates to secure individual political gains. Maharashtra BJP vice-president Keshav Upadhye echoed the call for a review, asking in a post on X whether the Mahayuti would introspect after the results, and why the alliance had stopped at two seats when there was a strong possibility of winning all five had its partners contested together.
What the Shiv Sena says in reply
The Shiv Sena has rejected the BJP's version of events and turned the charge around. Shiv Sena leader Anand Paranjpe said there was a complete lack of coordination about seat-sharing from day one, and accused the BJP of failing to work honestly in the interest of its allies, as well as of unfair seat distribution. In the Sena's telling, the problem was not a last-minute betrayal in one constituency but a flawed seat-sharing process from the start.
The exchange matters because it exposes a recurring tension inside the Mahayuti: three partners — the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the NCP — with overlapping ambitions in the same constituencies, and no single mechanism that has so far prevented them from working at cross-purposes in indirect elections where small, organised electorates can be swung by local coordination. The New Indian Express reported that the results have raised questions about the BJP's organisational strength, particularly after the Nagpur loss, while the Sena's response suggests it believes the BJP is using the defeat to shift responsibility rather than share it.
What the result does and does not change
It is important to keep the scale of this election in proportion. Five council seats do not change who governs Maharashtra: the state government rests on the assembly, not the council, and the Mahayuti remains in power. The Legislative Council is the state's upper house, and graduates' and teachers' constituencies form only one part of its membership, alongside members elected by local bodies, MLAs and nominated members.
What the result does change is the political mood inside the alliance. First, it gives the opposition MVA — the Congress and the NCP (SP) — a talking point that the ruling alliance is divided, and a demonstrated ability to win organised-electorate contests even where the BJP campaigns hard. Second, it puts pressure on the Mahayuti's leaders to show, before the next round of elections, that seat-sharing and campaign coordination will be settled early and honoured by all partners. Third, it leaves the NCP's position inside the alliance under scrutiny, since the party lost the seat it had been allotted in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar to its rival faction, the NCP (SP).
None of this amounts to a split. Public blame games after disappointing results are a familiar feature of coalition politics, and both the BJP and the Shiv Sena have an interest in keeping the alliance intact. But the speed and openness of the exchange — senior spokespersons trading charges on social media within hours — suggest the coordination problem is real enough that the alliance's leaders cannot simply ignore it.
What to watch next
The immediate question is whether the BJP, the Shiv Sena and the NCP hold a joint review of the results and agree on clearer rules for the next council and local-body contests. Upadhye's public call for introspection suggests at least part of the BJP wants such a review; Paranjpe's complaint about seat-sharing from day one suggests the Sena will demand a better deal in any such discussion.
The second question is Nagpur itself. The Congress's retention of the graduates' seat there, against a high-profile BJP campaign, will be watched as a signal of how organised voters in the state's second capital are judging the government. The third question is whether the MVA can convert three council wins into momentum elsewhere, or whether this remains a contained result in a specialised electorate that does not predict general elections.
For now, the story of the 2026 Maharashtra MLC polls is less about five seats and more about what the argument over them reveals: an alliance that won power together but, by its own leaders' admission, did not fight these five elections together.
Conclusion
The Maharashtra MLC results of 29 October 2026 gave the opposition MVA three seats and the ruling Mahayuti two, with the BJP and the Shiv Sena each blaming the other for the shortfall. The BJP points to the Sena's last-minute support for an independent-backed candidate in Pune and campaigning against the NCP in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar; the Sena points to a lack of coordination on seat-sharing from day one and unfair distribution. The Nagpur defeat, in the backyard of the chief minister and the RSS, is what made the row unavoidable. The government is not at risk from this result, but the alliance's ability to coordinate — the very thing both partners say would have delivered all five seats — is now openly in question, and that is what the next round of internal talks will have to fix.