Amit Shah Meets Maharashtra BJP Leaders in Mumbai, Skips Shiv Sena Ahead of Polls
BJP president Amit Shah held a short meeting with Maharashtra party leaders, including Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, in Mumbai on Monday, but did not meet the BJP’s ally, the Shiv Sena.
Shah’s Mumbai visit
While in the city, Shah went to Varsha, the Chief Minister’s official residence in the Malabar Hill area. A party functionary said his meetings were limited to state BJP leaders and that he also visited the Siddhivinayak temple at Prabhadevi. He was also due to visit the Lalbaugcha Raja Ganesh pandal in central Mumbai.
On Sunday evening Shah spoke at a rally in Solapur marking the end of the second phase of Fadnavis’s ‘Mahajanadesh Yatra’, an outreach campaign ahead of the state assembly elections. He held talks there with Fadnavis, state BJP president Chandrakant Patil and a few other leaders, spent the night in Solapur and travelled to Mumbai with Fadnavis on Monday.
The alliance and the coming polls
Political observers had expected Shah to meet Sena leaders with the assembly elections approaching, but he did not. The Uddhav Thackeray-led Sena is a BJP ally both at the Centre and in Maharashtra, though the two parties fought the 2014 state election separately. The BJP then won 121 of the 288 seats, its best result in the state so far.
In recent weeks several MLAs and leaders of the opposition Congress and NCP have moved to the BJP or the Sena, and more opposition figures could switch to the BJP when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Maharashtra on September 7 to inaugurate some projects.
What happened next
In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly election, the BJP won 105 seats, the Shiv Sena 56, the NCP 54 and the Congress 44. After the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance broke down, Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena became Chief Minister in November 2019 with the support of the NCP and the Congress.
See also: Bharatiya Janata Party | Elections
Originally published on 2 September 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.
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