Coalition cracks are not limited to the Opposition MVA in Maharashtra.

Within a week after the Shiv Sena (UBT), part of the Opposition coalition, announced that the party would contest the upcoming urban local body and Zilla Parishad elections alone, the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, which is part of the ruling MahaYuti coalition, seems to have followed suit.

"All parties [of MahaYuti] will finalise their strategy for elections to local bodies. If the alliance doesn't materialise, the NCP is ready to contest independently," the NCP’s Walse Patil told reporters in Shirdi on Saturday.

Patil echoed what Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut had declared on January 11 in Nagpur.

“From Mumbai till Nagpur, we [Uddhav Sena] will fight corporation elections on our own,” Raut was quoted as saying.

According to Raut, “workers of individual parties” did not “get opportunities” in an alliance and it hampered “organisational growth”.

“If we had more seats to contest in Mumbai [during the Assembly polls], we would have won them,” he argued.

In a similar tone, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Ambadas Danve later announced that while MVA (Maha Vikash Aghadi) “is united”, “the equations for elections to the local governing body are different.”

Following a humbling defeat in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly elections, in which the MVA won only 50 seats, discussions regarding cracks in the coalition made headlines. But now as the Ajit Pawar-led NCP also wishes to contest the local body elections alone, one might as well question MahaYuti’s unity too.

The NCP won 41 of the 57 seats it contested in the November 20 Maharashtra Assembly elections.

The upcoming local body polls will be the first major political battle between the opposition MVA and ruling MahaYuti after the Assembly elections.

The schedule of the local bodies elections is yet to be announced.