Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti
The Samyukta Maharashtra Movement achieved its aim when the present state of Maharashtra was created on 1 May 1960. The state reorganization left Marathi-speaking areas in Northern Karnataka, such as Belgaon, outside Maharashtra. The newly liberated people of Goa in a 1967 referendum rejected merger with Maharashtra.
Politics of Maharashtra
The politics of Maharashtra since its inception in 1960 and also of predecessor states such as Bombay has been dominated by the Indian National Congress party. Maharashtra became a bastion of the Congress party producing stalwarts such as Yashwantrao Chavan, Vasantdada Patil, Vasantrao Naik and Shankarrao Chavan. Sharad Pawar has been a towering personality in the state and National politics for nearly forty years. During his career, he has split the Congress twice with significant consequences for the state politics. The Congress party enjoyed a near unchallenged dominance of the political landscape until 1995 when the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured an overwhelming majority in the state to form a coalition government. After his second parting from the Congress party in 1999, Sharad Pawar formed the NCP but joined a Congress led coalition to form the state government after the 1999 Assembly elections.Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress party was the last Chief Minister of Maharashtra under the Congress-NCP alliance that ruled until 2014.
For the 2014 assembly polls, the two alliances between the NCP and Congress and between the BJP and Shiv Sena respectively broke down over seat allocations. In the election, the largest number of seats went to the Bharatiya Janata Party, with 122 seats. The BJP initially formed a minority government under Devendra Fadnavis but Shiv Sena has, as of December 2014, entered the Government and therefore the Government now enjoys a comfortable majority in the Maharashtra Vidhansabha.