An overview of Maharashtra assembly elections: Through the years

Abstract

Maharashtra politics in the last three decades invariably revolved around Sharad Pawar and late Bal Thackeray-indisputably the two tallest leaders of Maharashtra politics in recent times. Some other prominent leaders of the era such as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s late Pramod Mahajan and Gopinath Munde were more active as a conduit between the BJP and Thackeray while Sushil Kumar Shinde, late Vilasrao Deshmukh and late Sudhakarrao Naik (all former chief ministers of the state) were largely seen as quintessential Pawar baiters in the Congress. Pawar was once even considered a strong contender for the prime minister’s post in the early ‘90s while Thackeray remained the uncrowned king of Bombay (now Mumbai). Yet unlike Pawar, the latter personally remained away from electoral politics despite floating his right-wing political outfit, the Shiv Sena in the 1960s.