With 246 municipal councils and 42 municipal panchayats across Maharashtra headed to voting on December 2, these elections have thrown up unusual alliances that have caught many by surprise. Since the Shiv Sena split in 2022, the Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT) took on each other in various electoral contests, including the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held last year. But in several contests in the upcoming local body elections in the state, the two Senas have entered an alliance – a development that stands in sharp contrast to the bitter rivalry between the parties. While senior leaders from both camps maintain that these are “purely local adjustments”, their tie-ups in some civic body polls have triggered a row When he split the Sena in June 2022, Shinde justified his move by stating that his rebellion stemmed from Uddhav’s “unnatural” or “ideologically incompatible” partnerships with the Congress and the then undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which he said went against the “core principles” of Sena founder …