The Congress party won the Latur Municipal Corporation elections in Maharashtra on Friday, January 16, 2026. Out of 70 seats, Congress secured a clear majority with 43 seats. The BJP came second with 22 seats. Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi won 4 seats and the Nationalist Congress Party got 1 seat. Voting took place on January 15, and counting finished the next day. Political watchers say that Maharashtra BJP president Ravindra Chavan's controversial comment about late Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh helped the Congress. Chavan said memories of Deshmukh, a respected former CM from Latur, would be "wiped out" from his hometown. Chavan later apologized, but his remarks upset many citizens and political parties. Among the five former mayors since 2011, four ran again. Congress’s Smita Khanapure, the first mayor of Latur, lost to BJP’s Prerana Honrao in Ward 15. Another ex-mayor, Vikrant Gojamgunde, who switched from Congress to NCP, won in Ward 5 by 4,729 votes. Deepak Sul, also a former Congress mayor, kept his seat in Ward 10 with 5,451 votes. Former BJP mayor Suresh Pawar, now with Shiv Sena, lost in Ward 6 to the BJP candidate. In the previous 2017 polls, BJP won 36 seats and Congress took 33. This time, Congress made a strong comeback with a big lead.