Second Sena split in 4 years: How Thackeray's party is unravelling again

THe date stamp may be incident, but holds significance.June 20 pronounced exactly quatern years since Eknath Shinde began his march out of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of the Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP alliance, moving a group of Shiv Sena MLAs to Surat and then Guwahati — both in BJP-ruled states — before toppling Uddhav Thackeray's chief ministership nine days later.In the same week this year, six of nine Lok Sabha MPs of Uddhav’s Sena have reportedly submitted a letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker to form a separate group, and look set to eventually merge with Shinde's Sena to back the BJP-led NDA regime of PM Narendra Modi.This is the second major fracture in Bal Thackeray’s original Sena in four years. Maharashtra deputy CM Shinde had been in touch with the rebel MPs and assured them of full support, and his son and MP Shrikant Shinde played a key role in coordinating discussions in Delhi, reports say. The rebels — Sanjay Jadhav (MP from Parbhani), Bhausaheb Wakchaure (Shirdi), Sanjay Deshmukh (Yavatmal-Washim), Nagesh Patil Ashtikar (Hingoli), Sanjay Dina Patil (Mumbai North East) and Omraje Nimbalkar (Dharashiv) — had already skipped both a parliamentary party meeting of Shiv Sena (UBT) on Thursday, and the party's 60th foundation day event held by Uddhav on Friday.Arvind Sawant, Anil Desai and Rajabhau Waje, along with Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut, remained publicly in the Thackeray fold.Also read | Shiv Sena vs Sena (UBT) on foundation day: Shinde, Thackeray spar as rebel MPs stay awayWhat Thackeray saysUddhav Thackeray, in his first comments on the impending split, rejected the rebels' stated rationale that they feared a Congress merger, asserting that the Shiv Sena was not born to merge with anyone. “It was created to fight for the rights of Marathi people and protect Hindutva," he told party workers.He then took a dig at the Centre’s ruling BJP. "I fear the Maharashtra BJP might merge with the Shinde Sena," he said.Sanjay Raut put up a legal defence, reiterating the argument that two-thirds of the party as such has to merge, and not just the MPs or MLAs, for anti-defection law to not be applicable. He also called the six MPs “traitors”.Shinde, at his event to mark the Sena foundation day, dared Uddhav Thackeray to act against the rebels. He described the defections as “only a trailer” of a longer film. The defection has been given an off-the-record name ‘Operation Tiger’ by some leaders, playing on motifs used by Bal Thackeray, though Sanjay Raut has even used “dogs” in his digs at the breakaway MPs.Tenth Schedule comes into playThe six-of-nine figure is precise as, under the anti-defection law in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution of India, voluntarily giving up party membership or voting against the whip can be treated as defection, with disqualification as the consequence.The only legislative defence is merger with a two-thirds requirement. With six of nine MPs signed on, the rebels clear that two-thirds bar exactly — just as Raghav Chadha and his group did while defecting from AAP to BJP in April, and just as Bengal’s Trinamool Congress is facing a split among its ranks in the Lok Sabha.But there remains a pending legal question on whether two-thirds of the whole political party needs to be merged with another, or can the MPs’ or MLAs’ groups be treated as the party itself. The Supreme Court is to decide on that in a similar matter from Goa.A slow bleedWhat distinguishes the Sena's unravelling from, say, the TMC's near-instantaneous parliamentary collapse is the pace. The 2022 assembly split was a blitz. It took nine days from the first rebellion to Uddhav Thackeray's resignation. But the parliamentary haemorrhage took four years after the first shock.After the 2022 split, 40 of 56 Shiv Sena MLAs sided with Shinde and 16 with Thackeray, while in the Lok Sabha 13 of 18 MPs joined the Shinde camp and five remained with Uddhav. Both claimed to be heirs to Bal Thackeray's political legacy, with Uddhav stressing he is from the bloodline and Shinde saying he has held the ideological line. Thackeray rebuilt from that five-MP base. Contesting with a new name ‘Shiva Sena (UBT)’ and a flaming torch as symbol after the Election Commission handed Shinde the name and the bow-and-arrow in February 2023, Team Uddhav won nine seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It was seen as a creditable performance for a stripped-down party.The November 2024 Maharashtra assembly polls were harsher, though. Shiva Sena (UBT) won just 20 of 95 seats it contested, against Shinde's Sena's 57 wins from 87. January 2026 completed the rout, with the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance winning the BMC elections decisively, ending the Thackeray clan's hold on India's richest civic body. Each electoral cycle eroded the organisation further, until the parliamentary floor gave way too.The current rebellion is the sharpest in a line over the years. The first serious challenge to Bal Thackeray's authority came in 1991, when senior leader Chhagan Bhujbal walked out with 17 MLAs to join Sharad Pawar's camp, later serving as minister and deputy CM in Congress-NCP governments. After that also came Narayan Rane's expulsion and departure in 2005.But Bal Thackeray held the organisation together until his death in November 2012. His nephew Raj Thackeray had already left in 2005 to form his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena after son Uddhav was given the party’s heirship. Uddhav's son Aaditya emerged as the youth wing leader of the Sena later. Raj and Uddhav reunited recently for an alliance as politics has shifted fast in Maharashtra in recent years.Also read | ‘If Sena wasn't divided’, ‘if some switch’, what data says: Decoding the many ‘ifs’ in BMC, Maharashtra resultsCong ‘merger’ shadow from NCP and TMCThe Sena's parliamentary crisis has not unfolded in isolation. In July 2023, Ajit Pawar broke from the NCP led by his uncle Sharad Pawar and joined the Shinde-BJP government; the split left Sharad Pawar commanding just 12 of 53 assembly MLAs but seven of nine Lok Sabha MPs. Sharad Pawar lost the party name and symbol just as Uddhav did.His ‘NCP (SP)’ has since lost further ground, and reports have surfaced recently that some MPs are in touch with the Ajit Pawar faction, with speculation that the Sharad Pawar group could face a similar two-thirds-threshold challenge of its own.Simultaneously, Congress merger speculation swirls around the NCP (SP), underlining that Sharad Pawar was once a stalwart of the national party. Though, his daughter Supriya Sule, speaking to new agency ANI, said, “Neither anyone from our party has given any such proposal, nor have we received any such proposal.” This came at a time when Mamata Banerjee and her beleaguered TMC are also facing the existential question of whether or not to merge into the party she broke away from in the late 1990s. Sule drew a pattern when it comes to splits. "The way first Shiv Sena was split, then it was the NCP, the same is happening to the TMC. This is very sad.” Sharad Pawar himself had earlier remarked that several regional parties could merge with Congress over the next two years, saying he saw no ideological difference between the Congress and the NCP (SP) — remarks that triggered fresh speculation.Uddhav has rubbished any merger talk, but such is the crisis that he offered to step down as supremo “if that’s what party workers want”.