Devendra Fadnavis and the New Mahayuti Order in Maharashtra, Explained

No state has had a stranger half-decade than Maharashtra. Two of its biggest regional parties were split down the middle. Governments rose and fell on midnight oaths and Supreme Court hearings. By 2024, the only way to resolve who really commanded Maharashtra's loyalty was to ask the voters. They answered emphatically, and Devendra Fadnavis returned to the chief minister's office at the head of a dominant Mahayuti.

This is how India's industrial heartland realigned, and what the new order means.

The 60-second version

• The winner: The Mahayuti (BJP, Shinde's Shiv Sena, Ajit Pawar's NCP) swept the 2024 assembly election.
• The CM: Devendra Fadnavis of the BJP took charge in December 2024, with Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar as deputy chief ministers.
• The backstory: Two splits, the Shiv Sena in 2022 and the NCP in 2023, had thrown the state into turmoil.
• The verdict's meaning: The election largely settled which factions held the larger vote.
• The opposition: The Maha Vikas Aghadi (Uddhav Thackeray's Sena, Sharad Pawar's NCP, Congress) was routed and is rebuilding.

The turmoil that came before

To understand the 2024 result, you have to remember the chaos that preceded it. In 2022, Eknath Shinde led a revolt inside the Shiv Sena, walked out on Uddhav Thackeray, and toppled the Maha Vikas Aghadi government, becoming chief minister with BJP support. In 2023, the Nationalist Congress Party split too, when Ajit Pawar broke from his uncle Sharad Pawar to join the government.

Two of Maharashtra's defining family-and-party institutions were now each claimed by two rivals. The names, the symbols and the legacies were all in dispute. The only arbiter left was the electorate.

How 2024 settled it

The 2024 assembly election delivered a decisive Mahayuti majority and, with it, a rough answer to the question the splits had posed. The factions aligned with the BJP, Shinde's Sena and Ajit Pawar's NCP, generally outpolled their rivals, while the Maha Vikas Aghadi was heavily defeated.

The BJP emerged as the dominant force, and Devendra Fadnavis, who had served as chief minister before and as deputy in the Shinde government, returned to the top job in December 2024. In a pointed reversal of hierarchy, Eknath Shinde, the outgoing chief minister, became his deputy, alongside Ajit Pawar.

Who is Devendra Fadnavis

A Nagpur leader with deep roots in the BJP's organisational core, Fadnavis was Maharashtra's chief minister from 2014 to 2019 and remained the party's central strategist through the turbulent years that followed. His return caps a long campaign to make the BJP the unambiguous senior partner in the state, rather than a force dependent on regional allies.

Why it matters

Maharashtra is India's richest state and home to Mumbai, the country's financial capital, which makes control of its government a national prize. The realignment also carries a deeper lesson about Indian politics: when storied regional parties fracture, the ballot box, not the courtroom or the television studio, ultimately decides which claimant the public recognises.

For the BJP, the result consolidated a years-long project. For the Thackeray and Sharad Pawar camps, it was a painful verdict on the cost of the splits, and the start of a fight to stay relevant.

What each side says

The Mahayuti frames the win as a mandate for stability and development after years of disruption, and as proof that voters rewarded the alliance that delivered governance over the one that, in its telling, prioritised power struggles.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi argues the contest was shaped by organisational splits engineered against it, and that its core ideological base, especially the Thackeray and Sharad Pawar loyalists, remains intact and capable of a comeback in local elections.

What to watch next

1. Local body and municipal polls. Long-delayed civic elections, especially in Mumbai, are the next big test and the opposition's best chance to show pulse.
2. The Mahayuti's internal balance. How power is shared between Fadnavis, Shinde and Ajit Pawar will determine the government's stability.
3. The Thackeray and Pawar revival. Whether the opposition factions can rebuild their organisations or fade further.
4. Mumbai's governance. Control of the country's financial capital and its wealthy civic body remains the ultimate local prize.

Maharashtra's long season of turmoil has given way to a clearer order, with Devendra Fadnavis and a dominant Mahayuti in charge. Whether that order hardens or frays will be decided, as ever, in the state's relentless and unpredictable politics.

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This explainer is compiled from public reporting and election records. It reflects the situation at the time of writing and will be updated as events develop.