June 2026 marks four years since Eknath Shinde took a group of Shiv Sena MLAs from Mumbai to Surat, then flew them to Guwahati, bringing down the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government. Uddhav resigned as Chief Minister on June 30, 2022. Now, as Shiv Sena marks its 60th foundation day on June 19, the son of the party’s founder Bal Thackeray faces a new split: six of his nine Lok Sabha MPs are set to register a separate group in Parliament.

The move follows the BJP’s recent success in engineering defections from Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. After the Lok Sabha MPs, Uddhav’s MLAs may follow the same path—reportedly as many as 14 of his 20 in the State Assembly.

The split was confirmed when Arvind Sawant, the party’s Lok Sabha group leader, wrote to Speaker Om Birla. His letter stated that Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) was a single political entity that had taken no decision to merge with any other outfit. “Therefore, if a group of its MPs reaches out to the Speaker’s office with a demand for a separate group in the Lok Sabha, then consider the position of the party first before accepting any such demand,” Sawant wrote. The letter came on June 16, the day six of the nine MPs became unreachable to the party.

The six are: Sanjay Dina Patil (Mumbai North East), Sanjay Deshmukh (Yavatmal), Nagesh Patil Ashtikar (Hingoli), Omraje Naik Nimbalkar (Dharashiv), Sanjay Jadhav (Parbhani), and Bhausaheb Wakchoure (Shirdi).

The three MPs who remain with Uddhav are Arvind Sawant (South Mumbai), Anil Desai (South Central), and Rajabhau Waje (Nashik).

Uddhav’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut claimed each of the departing MPs was being paid Rs.15 crore to switch, with a total of Rs.50 crore promised once the process was complete. Speaking to Frontline on the morning of June 17, Raut said: “This is a daylight murder of democracy. The BJP and its allies have become the Bhasmasur of Indian politics. They want all their opposition finished.”

For nearly three months, speculation had circulated about Uddhav’s MPs joining Shinde’s faction. On June 14, Uddhav held a meeting at his Bandra East residence Matoshree in Mumbai. Anil Desai afterwards told reporters that all MPs were with Uddhav—five had attended online, four in person. The meeting was widely read as a damage-control exercise.

A source in Eknath Shinde’s party told Frontline that the rebellion had originally been planned for the first week of July. “But as Uddhav started working to woo his MPs, it was advanced and done in June itself,” the source said. The rebel MPs reportedly left for Delhi on the night of June 16 on chartered flights departing from Nanded, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, and Pune. Shinde also flew to Delhi the same night to meet Birla; finding the Speaker in Jaipur for his home State engagements, Shinde’s team followed him there. Sources told Frontline that the split would be placed on record after June 19, the party’s foundation day.

Shinde’s success in drawing away six of Uddhav’s MPs can have impact beyond Maharashtra. The NDA formed the central government after the 2024 polls with 293 seats. The two-thirds majority mark in the 543-seat Lok Sabha is 362. After at least 20 Trinamool MPs defected to the NDA, the alliance’s strength stood at around 314 seats—still well short of the constitutional amendment threshold. The six Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs moving across would bring the tally closer still, though the NDA would remain at least 40 seats short of a two-thirds majority. Legislation the ruling alliance has been pursuing—the Women’s Reservation Act linked to delimitation, which now awaits its implementation, and the Uniform Civil Code—requires a constitutional amendment, making every additional vote significant.

For Maharashtra, this is a repeat of a pattern now three years old. In June 2022, Shinde broke Shiv Sena; in June 2023, Ajit Pawar broke the Nationalist Congress Party. With 13 Lok Sabha MPs now—seven from his own faction and the six from Uddhav’s—Shinde would become the largest force from Maharashtra in the Lower House. The BJP has nine MPs from the State, Sharad Pawar’s party eight, and the Congress 13 plus one independent.

NDA can benefit

Within the NDA, Shinde’s expanded numbers matter for a specific reason. The BJP has no majority of its own in the Lok Sabha and depends on allies for government stability. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was reportedly opposed to the poaching of Uddhav’s MPs, but the operation is said to have proceeded with the backing of Home Minister Amit Shah. The tensions between Shinde and Fadnavis are an open fact in Maharashtra politics; by increasing his parliamentary numbers at a moment when the BJP cannot act unilaterally, Shinde has strengthened his hand in any future negotiation over seat-sharing or government formation.

Amit Shah made clear during the 2024 Assembly election campaign that the BJP intended to contest the next State election without allies. Shinde has drawn the appropriate conclusion: without numerical power, a junior partner has no seat at the table. Both Shinde and his MP son Shrikant have been touring Maharashtra continuously, building the party’s presence for what they see as a solo run. Six additional Lok Sabha MPs are, in that context, an organisational and symbolic asset.

For Uddhav Thackeray, the blow is compounded by criticism within his own camp. Party leaders have repeatedly urged him and his son Aditya to travel across Maharashtra rather than remain in Mumbai. Aditya has only recently begun to move around the State—and the task of rebuilding on the ground will take time the party may not have. Sources in the Shinde camp say the possibility of some of Uddhav’s 20 State Assembly MLAs following the MPs cannot be ruled out.

Sharad Pawar’s 8 Lok Sabha MPs and 10 MLAs are also reported to be under pressure. A further round of defections from the NCP (Sharad Pawar) faction to the BJP’s side would extend the ruling alliance’s numbers in both Houses.

The legal knot

The current defections are possible in part because of unresolved litigation over the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, popularly known as the Anti-Defection Law. When Shinde broke from Shiv Sena in 2022, the matter went to the Election Commission, which allotted the original party name and the bow-and-arrow symbol to his faction. Uddhav challenged the EC order in the Supreme Court; the matter is sub-judice. The same sequence followed Ajit Pawar’s split from the Nationalist Congress Party in 2023: the EC allotted the original party name and symbol to Ajit’s faction, Sharad Pawar’s group appealed to the Supreme Court, and the case is pending.

Both cases turn on a constitutional question the courts have not yet resolved: in determining which faction is the “real” party under the Tenth Schedule, do the primary requirements lie with the two-thirds threshold of elected representatives or with the organisational structure of the party? The answer will decide the legality of every defection carried out in the meantime—including those in Trinamool, where rebel MPs have reportedly moved to merge with a small Tripura-based party specifically to navigate the anti-defection provisions.

The legal uncertainty has created a window that the BJP and its allies have exploited in Maharashtra, West Bengal, and elsewhere. Until the Supreme Court decides on the Shiv Sena and NCP cases, that window remains open.

Beyond the legal question lies a political one. The six MPs seeking to join Shinde won their seats in 2024 on a mandate explicitly against the NDA. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the MVA won 30 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats while the Mahayuti alliance won 17—a verdict that Maharashtra interpreted, at the time, as a decisive rebuke of the ruling coalition. MPs elected on that mandate crossing to the other side is not merely a matter of parliamentary reasoning; it raises the older, harder question of what an electoral mandate is worth.

Also Read | Game of thrones: Maharashtra witnesses political upheaval like never before

Also Read | The battle for legacy and ideology in Shiv Sena