Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray has accused the BJP of using the defection of six Lok Sabha MPs from his party to the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena as a manoeuvre not only against his faction but also to limit Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis’s room for political expansion.
Thackeray, speaking on Saturday after a week of turmoil inside his party, described the episode widely labelled “Operation Tiger” as, in effect, “Operation Devendra”. He alleged that the move had been engineered at the highest level of the BJP to keep Fadnavis “in check” and to ensure additional parliamentary support for politically sensitive legislation, including any future delimitation-related measure.
The charge marks a sharp shift in Thackeray’s response to the latest split. Rather than framing the defections only as another assault on his organisation, he sought to portray them as part of a larger power play within the ruling camp. His remarks also came after Fadnavis and Thackeray travelled on the same flight from Mumbai to Nagpur, an episode that triggered speculation in Maharashtra’s political circles before the BJP sought to play it down as incidental.
Six MPs who had won on the Shiv Sena ticket in the 2024 Lok Sabha election have crossed over to the Shinde-led Shiv Sena: Sanjay Dina Patil, Sanjay Deshmukh, Sanjay Jadhav, Bhausaheb Wakchaure, Nagesh Patil-Ashtikar and Omprakash Raje Nimbalkar. Their move has reduced Thackeray’s effective strength in the Lok Sabha and strengthened Shinde’s claim to represent the political legacy of the undivided Shiv Sena.
Shinde, now deputy chief minister in the Mahayuti government, has presented the switch as a successful expansion of his party. He said the MPs had joined in accordance with constitutional and parliamentary procedures and asserted that they would contest future elections on the Shiv Sena symbol. The phrase “six tigers” has been used by his camp to project the crossover as a show of strength.
Thackeray rejected that framing, arguing that the defections were neither spontaneous nor rooted in ideology. He accused Union Home Minister Amit Shah of being behind the plan and said the BJP leadership was wary of Fadnavis emerging as a larger national figure. The BJP has not accepted the allegation, and its leaders have maintained that political rivals may interact in public without implying any hidden arrangement.
The defections have opened a fresh phase in the Sena versus Sena battle that began with the 2022 rebellion, when Shinde split the party and toppled the Maha Vikas Aghadi government led by Thackeray. The Election Commission later allotted the Shiv Sena name and bow-and-arrow symbol to the Shinde faction, while Thackeray’s group took the name Shiv Sena.
The 2024 general election had offered Thackeray a measure of recovery when his party won nine Lok Sabha seats in Maharashtra, outperforming the rival Sena faction in several direct contests. That gain has now been weakened by the exit of two-thirds of its MPs. The three who remain with Thackeray include Arvind Sawant, Anil Desai and Rajabhau Waje.
The broader arithmetic matters because Maharashtra sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the second-highest number after Uttar Pradesh. Any shift in allegiance among MPs from the state carries weight in Parliament and also affects negotiations within the ruling alliance. Shinde’s bargaining position inside the Mahayuti could improve, even as the BJP remains the dominant force in the state government.
Maharashtra’s ruling coalition already has a heavy Assembly majority after the 2024 state election. The BJP won 132 of the 288 seats, while the Shinde-led Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar-led NCP added substantial numbers to the Mahayuti tally. Fadnavis returned as chief minister, with Shinde accepting the deputy chief minister’s post after having led the government during the previous phase.
That arrangement has remained politically sensitive. Shinde’s supporters argue that he preserved Balasaheb Thackeray’s ideology by breaking with Uddhav’s alliance with the Congress and NCP. Thackeray’s camp says the rebellion was enabled by central power and investigative pressure, and that defectors were rewarded for abandoning the party mandate.
