Indian National Congress held on as Maharashtra's largest party, without ever winning enough seats to govern alone.

It won 75 of the 288 seats on offer, a hung result — a result where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone.

Shiv Sena followed with 69 seats.

INC took 27.2% of the vote to SHS's 17.3%, leaving most of the state's ballots scattered across the rest of a crowded field.

Narayan Rane was sworn in as Chief Minister on 1 February 1999, taking over from Manohar Joshi as leader of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance. He led that government into the assembly election held later that year.¹

Sharad Pawar, Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled from the Indian National Congress on 20 May 1999, after disputing Sonia Gandhi's right, as an Italian-born leader, to lead the party. They founded the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on 10 June 1999.²

Congress and the new NCP then fielded rival candidates against each other in the September assembly election, contesting without a pre-poll seat-sharing alliance across the state's 288 constituencies.³

The Election Commission ran the vote in two phases of 144 constituencies each, with polling on 5 September and 11 September 1999. The count followed in October.⁴

INC extended its run as Maharashtra's largest party, but for the first time faced a serious new rival built from a breakaway of its own ranks.

This was its 5th straight election in that position.

The single biggest shift ran from INC to Nationalist Congress Party, covering 33 of the 159 seats that changed hands.

Turnout, the share of registered voters who actually cast a ballot, fell -12.1 pp from the previous election.

The closest race was at Digras, Maharashtra, decided by a margin — how far ahead the winner finished over whoever came second — of 126 votes.

Latur, Maharashtra sat at the other extreme, won by a margin of 43.5% of the vote.

Bhilwadi Wangi, Maharashtra recorded the highest turnout of any constituency, 82.7%.

Belapur, Maharashtra was the largest constituency by registered voters, with 8,90,784 on its rolls.

Aurangabad West, Maharashtra drew the most candidates of any seat, 16 names on the ballot.

Prakash Ambedkar's Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh entered assembly elections for the first time, putting up 34 candidates and winning three seats on 606,827 votes — one of three parties to make its Maharashtra assembly debut that year.⁵

Manohar Joshi of Shiv Sena became Chief Minister in 1995, forming Maharashtra's first non-Congress government.⁶

The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance had won a combined 138 of Maharashtra's 288 assembly seats that year, more than any single party's own tally.⁶

That Shiv Sena-BJP alliance was still governing, now under Narayan Rane, when the state returned to the polls in September 1999.⁶¹