Six tigers are here: Eknath Shinde
6 MPs from Uddhav Thackeray team join Eknath Shinde party
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, it appears, had the last laugh again. Six out of nine Lok Sabha MPs from Team Uddhav Thackeray joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in Mumbai on Monday evening, ending days of speculation. The architect, who had led a similar exercise in 2022, announced, “Operation Tiger is complete now.” Operation Tiger was the name given to the Shiv Sena’s move to engineer defections in the Thackeray camp and wean MPs over to its side.
“The six tigers are here. They have all now joined the real Shiv Sena family. I welcome them to the real Shiv Sena family,” Shinde said on a social media platform. Omraje Nimbalkar (Dharashiv), Sanjay Dina Patil (Mumbai North-East), Sanjay Jadhav (Parbhani), Sanjay Deshmukh (Yavatmal-Washim), Nagesh Patil Ashtikar (Hingoli), and Bhausaheb Vakchaure (Shirdi) broke out from Uddhav’s Sena to join the Shinde faction.
“These Lok Sabha members have now joined the original Shiv Sena that follows the teachings of (party founder) late Balasaheb Thackeray. Four years back, I took a strong step and now I have hit a sixer (a reference to the number of MPs who have switched loyalties),” Shinde said. He also referred to his rebellion in June 2022 in the United Shiv Sena, which brought down the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) Government and catapulted him to the post of chief minister.
The rebels joined the Shiv Sena at an event in the presence of Shinde and other senior party leaders, five days after skipping a crucial parliamentary party meeting of the Shiv Sena (UBT) in New Delhi.
The meeting was attended by only three Lok Sabha MPs of the Opposition party.
These rebel parliamentarians had won against the BJP and Shiv Sena candidates in the 2024 general elections. The Shiv Sena (UBT) had bagged nine Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra in 2024. The entry of the dissident MPs in the Shiv Sena is expected to give a boost to the bargaining power of Shinde in the ruling coalition Mahayuti, which also consists of the BJP and the NCP.
“I did it earlier (split Shiv Sena) to save the principles of late Balasaheb Thackeray and to save the Shiv Sena. Now, this move (rebellion in the Lok Sabha wing of the Sena UBT) is the second stage of Shiv Sena expansion,” Shinde asserted. All of them will contest on the Shiv Sena symbol in the 2029 Lok Sabha polls from their respective constituencies and will get elected for sure, he said while responding to a question.
Without taking names of Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders, Shinde advised them to introspect instead of resorting to abuses, an oblique reference to Thackeray aide and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, who launched an expletive-laden tirade against the rebels last week. “It is time for introspection for those whose party these MPs have left. They start abusing in the morning, and change the tone in the evening and try to appease them. There seems to be some problem with them,” Shinde said.
Amid the crisis, Uddhav Thackeray met his MLAs to draft a strategy to corner the Mahayuti government during the ongoing monsoon session of the Maharashtra legislature. The meeting, held at the party’s ‘Shivalay’ office on the first day of the monsoon session, took place even as six MPs defected to the rival Shinde-led faction just 500 meters away at the Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan.
