Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray's biggest achievement in the first year in the chief minister's office, was to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at bay, while finding a safer passage to run the three-party government through the politically hostile and economically worrisome situation that continues to be compounded by the novel Coronavirus pandemic. In the times to come, Thackeray's biggest challenge will be working on the strong bonding between the Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Congress - the unity alone can make the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) fitter and help it survive the onslaught of unrelenting BJP. At the first instance last November, the MVA promised to be a harbinger of hope for the anti-BJP bandwagon across the country. A year after Uddhav Thackeray's coronation as the chief of an ideologically different alliance, the Bihar voters created a situation that the anti-BJP hopefuls expected to be used to implement the Maharashtra pattern there, but the thought didn't materialise because the BJP had taken due precautions and worked out a preventive plan that some people say would go kaput in the future once Nitish Kumar fully realises the need of severing the ties with the BJP, the way the Sena did last year by breaking a pre-poll alliance.

While the BJP doubled its strength in finishing a close second to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the Bihar assembly and installed Nitish despite him having fewer seats, it also won most of the by-polls up north and down south making it the first preference of the voters. The BJP has already toppled the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and failed despite trying its best in Rajasthan. After Bihar it has focused its energies on West Bengal. Bigger or smaller elections, the BJP doesn't shy from using all the might of national leaders for campaigning. The on-going Greater Hyderabad Municipal polls stand testimony to the BJP's vision that has also brought the 2022 Mumbai municipal elections under its radar before any other party could take a wake-up call.