Shiv Sena (UBT) to loose Parliament office

A very precarious situation has arisen for the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, which has lost six of its Lok Sabha MPs to the rival Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena recently.

The Thackeray-powered Shiv Sena, which has seen several ministers in NDA regimes once upon a time and nonetheless also a Speaker in Lok Sabha (late Manohar Joshi), will be without an office space/chamber in the Parliament House complex.

The Thackeray faction on Wednesday urged Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to share the demands submitted to him by the six rebel MPs of the party who have joined the Shinde-led party.

Apart from losing office space, the reduced parliamentary presence may also affect Shiv Sena (UBT)’s role in national political consultations, as parties with less than five MPs are not invited to all-party meetings convened by the Centre on key legislative and national issues. The allotted office in the Parliament House complex will have to be vacated by the UBT Shiv Sena due to a reduction in its Parliamentary strength, Parliament sources said.

Under Parliamentary norms, separate office space within the Parliament House complex is allotted only to parties with five or more MPs.

According to sources, once the Lok Sabha Speaker formally recognises the merger of the six rebel MPs with the ruling Shinde faction, Thackeray’s Sena will be left with only four Parliamentarians.

After meeting Birla, Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs Anil Desai and Arvind Sawant briefed the media that they requested the Speaker to “uphold the provisions of the Constitution” and sought a copy of the demands submitted by the rebels. “We asked him if he had received any appeal from the rebels...” Sawant said, adding that the Speaker told them they had not received anything in writing from the rebel MPs.

Desai said they underlined before the Speaker that the Tenth Schedule is clear: “Any group of a legislature party cannot merge into some other party on its own, even if they have a two-thirds majority”. He added that the Speaker would update them after checking details with his office if the rebel MPs had submitted anything in writing.

Sawant, Desai and Rajabhau Waje remains with the Thackeray’s party, while Lok Sabha MPs Nagesh Aashtikar, Sanjay Deshmukh, Sanjay Jadhav, Sanjay Dina Patil, Omprakash Raje Nimbalkar and Bhausaheb Wakchaure have shifted to Shinde’s Shiv Sena with the claim to be the real Shiv Sena based on the principles and ideals of late Balasaheb Thackeray.

The Election Commission had recognised the Shinde-led faction as the real Shiv Sena. Shinde was the principal architect of the split in the undivided Shiv Sena in 2022 that brought down the Maha Vikas Aghadi Government.