Mumbai/New Delhi, July 28 (UNI) In a fresh salvo, the Shiv Sena on Thurs- day sought disqualification of its 12 rebel Members of Parliament who have crossed over to the rival camp led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The development comes 10 days after the MPs walked over en masse to the Shinde group, named Rahul Shewale as their parliamentary party leader, and even submitted a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
“I have sought disqualification of the 12 Shiv Sena rebel MPs,” Vinayak Raut, the Shiv Sena Parliamentary Party Leader, told media persons after meeting the Speaker this afternoon in New Delhi. The Shiv Sena has a total of 22 MPs – 19 in Lok Sabha and three in Rajya Sabha, all from Maharashtra, except one Lok Sabha MP from the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The 12 MPs supporting Shinde are Bhavana Gawali (Yavatmal- Washim), Shewale (Mumbai South-Central), Shrikant Shinde (Kalyan-Thane), Hemant Patil (Hingoli), Krupal Tumane (Ramtek), Sadashiv Lokhande (Shirdi), Hemant Godse (Nashik), Rajendra Gavit (Palghar), Dhairyasheel Mane (Hat- kanangale), Shrirang Barne (Maval), Prataprao Jadhav (Buldhana), and San- jay Mandlik (Kolhapur). After they joined Shinde formally, they submitted letters to the Speaker appointing Shewale as their new leader and Gawali as the new Chief Whip in Lok Sabha, “replacing” Vinayak Raut. The 6 Lok Sabha MPs who are with Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray are Arvind Sawant (Mum- bai South), Gajanan Kirtikar (Mumbai North-West), Raut (Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg), Sanjay Jadhav (Parbhani), Omraje Nimbalkar (Osmanabad) and Kalaben Delkar (UT Dadra & Nagar Haveli). All the Rajya Sabha MPs – Sanjay Raut, Anil Desai, and Priyanka Chaturvedi, all from Mumbai – continue to remain with Thackeray. The 31-month-old Maha Vikas Aghadi government of Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress headed by CM Thackeray crashed on June 29, capping a 10-day long political drama played across three states – Gujarat, Assam, and Goa. On June 30, Shinde was sworn in as CM and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Devendra Fadnavis as the Deputy CM while the apparently bleeding Sena cried foul and moved the Supreme Court for various reliefs, with the crucial hearing scheduled on Monday, August 1, and now the party has demanded disqualification of the dozen MPs who switched sides.
