Shiv Sena: The party has 22 MPs in Parliament -- 19 in Lok Sabha, three in Rajya Sabha.
New Delhi: The Shiv Sena has sought the disqualification of 12 party MPs who swore their allegiance to the Eknath Shinde faction of the party. The MPs had named Rahul Shewale as their leader in the Lok Sabha and submitted a letter to Speaker Om Birla. Vinayak Raut, a senior Sena leader, said, "I have sought disqualification of the 12 Shiv Sena rebel MPs".
The party has 22 MPs in Parliament -- 19 in Lok Sabha, three in Rajya Sabha. One MP is from Dadra and Nagar Haveli. All of the rest are from Maharashtra, where Uddhav Thackeray has been facing a rebellion led by Eknath Shinde.
Shinde, Thackeray's former number 2 in the party, led a rebellion of MLAs and toppled his boss's government. He became the Chief Minister earlier this month and is now fighting a legal battle for the party's election symbol.
Shinde says the faction led by him is the real Shiv Sena. The claim is contested by Uddhav Thackeray who said he has the support of party workers.
The last 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 (Hatkanangale), Shrirang Barne (Maval), Prataprao Jadhav (Buldhana), and Sanjay Mandlik (Kolhapur).
These MLAs had submitted letters to Om Birla saying they support Shewale as their new leader and Gawali as the Lok Sabha chief whip.
Shiv Sena MPs Arvind Sawant (Mumbai South), Gajanan Kirtikar (Mumbai North-West), Raut (Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg), Sanjay Jadhav (Parbhani), Omraje Nimbalkar (Osmanabad) and Kalaben Delkar (UT Dadra & Nagar Haveli), are still supporting Thackeray.
All the Rajya Sabha MPs - Sanjay Raut, Anil Desai, and Priyanka Chaturvedi, all from Mumbai - are also supporting Uddhav Thackeray.
Shinde, now the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, had claimed Thackeray digressed from the issue of Hindutva. He demanded the Sena enter an alliance with BJP, its erstwhile ally.
With inputs from IANS
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