Aaditya Thackeray, son of Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, was to begin a mass contact programme from Jalgaon on Thursday afternoon. It is the first time a member of the Sena’s first family has undertaken a political yatra to reach voters, both to consolidate the party’s base and to find new support.

The yatra

The first phase starts in Jalgaon and will run over the next five days through North Maharashtra, taking in Jalgaon, Dhule, Nashik and Ahmednagar. The yatra will be held in several phases, covering nearly 4,000 km across the state, with public meetings, chowk sabhas and interactions with party workers.

Why it matters

The tour comes ahead of the state assembly election due later this year. In the last assembly polls the Sena ended its three-decade alliance with the BJP and contested alone; having won fewer seats, it had to accept a junior role, and its relations with Devendra Fadnavis, the BJP’s first chief minister in Maharashtra, have been strained. The two parties came together again for this year’s Lok Sabha election.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation polls were another point of friction. The Sena has controlled the BMC for decades, but its strength there fell sharply after the BJP fought the local polls separately. The Sena also faces a challenge from within the family: Raj Thackeray, Uddhav’s estranged cousin and head of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, has been campaigning hard for the NCP-Congress alliance, and recently met Sonia Gandhi in Delhi amid talk that the MNS could formally join the opposition front against the BJP and the Sena.

What happened next

In the 2019 Maharashtra assembly election, the BJP won 105 of the 288 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: Elections | Political leaders

Originally published on 18 July 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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