Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Saturday approved the merger of six Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) lawmakers with the Shiv Sena and allotted a separate seating arrangement for 20 rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs.
<figure class="art
The decision came two days ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament that begins on Monday. The TMC rebels’ plan to secure recognition as members of Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), a nondescript party based in West Bengal, still awaits clearance from the Lok Sabha’s top office.
A senior official said that the merger issue of the TMC rebels was “under consideration” and “an appropriate decision would be taken shortly”. Two TMC rebels told HT they were hopeful that it would be approved in a day or two.
An internal circular issued by the Lok Sabha’s table office on Saturday said, “Consequent upon the change in party affiliation of 6 members of Shiv Sena UBT in Lok Sabha, a revised party position in the 18th Lok Sabha is enclosed.”
The circular showed Shiv Sena with 13 lawmakers and Sena (UBT) with three. The circular also added that 20 rebel TMC members will sit separately. The changes come ahead of the all-party meeting on Sunday morning. The government has already invited the rebel TMC leaders to attend the meeting as NCPI representatives.
A letter from parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju to rebel TMC leader Sudip Bandopadhyay said, “Recently, you and 19 other MPs have joined NCPI, and have already requested the Hon’ble Speaker Lok Sabha for recognition which is under his consideration.” Bandopadhyay also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday evening.
The Sena is now the largest NDA party in Parliament from Maharashtra. It had originally won seven seats in 2024. But in June, six Sena (UBT) Lok Sabha members – Sanjay Jadhav, Bhausaheb Wakchaure, Sanjay Deshmukh, Nagesh Patil Ashtikar, Omraje Nimbalkar and Sanjay Patil – joined the Shiv Sena in the presence of party chief and deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde, boosting the regional party’s presence in Parliament and bolstering the National Democratic Alliance’s numbers. “The required process has been completed. All six MPs have joined the Shiv Sena. Operation Tiger is a success,” Shinde had announced at the time.
If the NCPI move is approved, the NDA will have 319 MPs in the Lok Sabha, still short of 41 members from the two-thirds majority mark of 360 in the House. The Sena is currently the second-largest ally of the ruling coalition after the TDP with 15 members –13 in the Lok Sabha and 2 in the Upper House.
The Shiv Sena welcomed the Speaker’s decision. “These MPs were ignored by their leaders [in UBT)… They took the right decision by joining us. We will welcome them in the Sena,” Shiv Sena parliamentary party leader Shrikant Shinde said.
Shiva Sena (UBT) said it will study the Speaker’s order and decide the next course of action. “We don’t know on what grounds they have been recognised. We will have wait for a copy of the order. Then we will decide on the course of action and when to move the court,’’ Shiv Sena (UBT) parliamentary party leader Arvind Sawant said.
TMC’s Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O’Brien criticised the Speaker’s decision to allow separate seats. “Mocking our democracy. Speaker has referred to 20 traitors as still being TMC MPs. Minutes later, Modi-Shah minister invites traitors for an all-party meet & refers to them as NCPI,” he posted on X.
The TMC rebels, led by Sudip Bandopadhyay and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, had met Birla on June 14 to submit an application for merger. Around the same time, six Sena rebels had met Birla for a similar purpose.
Birla later met the TMC leadership, including the party’s floor leader Abhishek Banerjee, and the Sena (UBT) brass.
Earlier this week, Dastidar told HT that the speaker had assured the group that they will get a separate office and seating arrangement in Parliament, which was an indirect recognition of the merger with NCPI.
The development came amid speculation that the government might re-introduce a constitution amendment bill to implement women’s reservation and delimitation that failed to garner the required two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha in the previous session. To be sure, the government has not given any indication so far that it is gearing up to bring a revised bill.
There is also buzz that the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), a partner in Maharashtra’s opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), was inching closer to the ruling NDA. The NCP chief Sunetra Pawar opposes the move, according to people aware of developments. NCP SP leader Supriya Sule had also denied such speculations.
HT reported earlier this week that there was a possibility that the government might revise the text of the proposed bill to include a reference to the 50% proportional increase in seats for each state, said a person aware of the details. According to this person, the Union government was keen to introduce the bill “provided it” had the numbers.
The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirty First Amendment) Bill, 2026 and the Delimitation Bill, which sought to redraw boundaries based on the 2011 census and is a prerequisite for implementing the 33% quotas for women in legislatures, were introduced in the Lok Sabha in the previous session. But the constitution amendment bill failed to reach the two-thirds majority mark in the Lower House, getting defeated 298 to 230. At the time, the NCP (SP) and Sena (UBT) had voted against the bill.
The government’s legislative push involved raising the cap on seats in the Lok Sabha from 550 to 850, with the allocation of seats to states, the reserved constituencies and their boundaries being defined by a delimitation commission on the basis of the latest census, which would mean the 2011 one in this case.
But the Opposition remained unconvinced, pointing out that the government’s assurances of a uniform 50% rise in Lok Sabha seats in every state was verbal and not mentioned in the text of the bills. In his speech at the time, Union home minister Amit Shah attempted to turn the tables on the Opposition, offering to bring an official amendment mentioning a 50% increase in Lok Sabha seats in return for support for the women’s reservation bill. But the draft law was still defeated.
