The success of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance in beating back the BJP in Maharashtra has re-ignited the quest for Opposition unity.

All top Opposition leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, have been invited to the swearing-in of Uddhav Thackeray as chief minister on Thursday.

Joint celebrations by workers of the three parties in Maharashtra on Wednesday have watered down fears of conflicts on the ground.

Uddhav’s son Aaditya flew to Delhi on Wednesday evening to personally invite Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the swearing-in.

The Congress posted pictures of both meetings on its Twitter handle. Aaditya told journalists he had met the two leaders to seek their blessings.

Shivaji Park will play host to a big secular gathering despite the centrality of the Sena’s role in the coalition.

While a decision on Sonia and Manmohan attending has not been taken, the Congress will be represented in a big way. Several Congress chief ministers are expected to travel to Mumbai, where senior leaders Ahmed Patel, Mallikarjun Kharge and K.C. Venugopal are already present. Rahul Gandhi, who has been keeping a low profile since the general election, is not expected.

The Opposition invitees include M.K. Stalin, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav and Naveen Patnaik. There was no confirmation whether RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and other non-BJP chief ministers have been invited. Sena sources said in the evening the list was still being finalised and many leaders were being informed over the phone.

Invitations have also been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, who had gone all out to thwart the alliance from coming to power.

The bold decision of the Sena — the BJP’s oldest ally and an integral part of its Hindutva ideological fraternity — to break free from the big brother has injected new hope into the Opposition’s unity efforts despite the failure of past attempts.

Some leaders said other BJP allies might also review their ties with the BJP, and others felt Maharashtra was the trigger the Opposition needed to come out of its shell.

Bihar had offered such hope in 2015 when Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar stopped the BJP juggernaut, but then came the somersault by Nitish who crossed over to the BJP’s side.

In Karnataka, again, the Congress succeeded in stopping the BJP and offered the chief minister’s post to junior partner JDS but that experiment collapsed after 14 months when several of the ruling MLAs defected to the BJP.

An impressive gathering of Opposition leaders in Calcutta at a rally organised by Mamata Banerjee also failed to blunt the BJP’s surge.

But none of this has discouraged key Opposition strategists from nurturing huge expectations from Maharashtra.

Some have already begun to see this as a turning point. These leaders do not see the alliance as a dilution of secularism and instead believe the Sena’s exit will weaken the BJP. They are also hoping for a moderation of the Sena’s political agenda and rhetoric.

Uddhav drove to the NCP office at YB Chavan Bhavan on Wednesday to hold discussions with Sharad Pawar and Ahmed Patel on ministry formation, signalling that the three parties are not allowing their traditional rivalry or egos to cloud the nascent relationship.

One Congress MLA told The Telegraph over the phone from Mumbai: “The real indications came from the grassroots. Celebrations have been reported from almost every district and town, which we certainly didn’t expect. Workers from all three parties are coming to us to express gratitude. This realignment will dramatically affect local bodies as the BJP will get ousted in most places if these three parties come together. We can marginalise the BJP very badly in the state.”