Mumbai, June 17: The Shiv Sena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) on Wednesday said that politics has become completely unpredictable, and it is impossible to tell when someone’s fortunes might suddenly soar.

Citing the case of West Bengal, the party said this phenomenon has reached “a point of absolute absurdity”. An obscure, hollow outfit called the ‘Nationalist Citizens Party of India’ (NCPI) has hit the political lottery, suddenly gaining 22 ‘ready-made’ Members of Parliament (MPs).

The Shiv Sena(UBT) in an editorial in its mouthpiece, ‘Saamana’, stated that established regional political forces like the Shiv Sena or Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have never managed to secure such a high number of MPs at one time. Numerous political parties have spent their entire existence struggling to elect even a single MLA or MP. What prominent leaders like Adv Prakash Ambedkar, Ramdas Athawale, and Arvind Kejriwal could not achieve, this Tripura-registered NCPI managed overnight.

According to the editorial, this “miracle” of Indian democracy was made possible entirely due to the “strategic manoeuvres of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar”.

“Though the party originates from Tripura — a state that only sends two members to the Lok Sabha — this Tripura-based party will now command 22 seats in the Lok Sabha, operating strictly as ‘yes-men’ to PM Modi. It perfectly exemplifies the proverb, ‘When the Almighty gives, He breaks through the roof’ — showering unasked bounty upon them,” the editorial said.

Ironically, the NCPI chief, Uttiya Kundu, was completely unaware that his party had suddenly won a “lottery” of 20 to 22 ready-made MPs. This sudden “money laundering of MPs” into his party left him completely bewildered, panicked, and confused, remarked the editorial.

“The defecting MPs have no reason to fear Kundu. Cowardly, selfish, and compromised MPs from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) simply engineered a mass merger into Kundu’s alleyway-registered party to secure personal safety,” claimed the Thackeray camp.

“This marks a dark chapter in the history of Indian politics. The absolute vow taken in Kolkata by BJP to ensure the Trinamool Congress would not even survive for medicinal purposes after the elections has been practically realised. It has exposed that Mamata Banerjee’s party was filled with fugitives and compromised individuals whose grand rhetoric regarding Bengali identity (‘Maa, Mati, Manush’) was entirely hollow. They held no genuine love for Mamata Banerjee or the pride of Bengal; at the first taste of defeat, they collapsed like a house of cards and scattered like dry leaves,” said the editorial.

According to the Thackeray camp, this political script is not unique to Bengal, and the “ruling dispensation in Delhi has deployed the exact same strategy across other proud, self-respecting states. Currently, in the political market, it is the defectors and traitors who command the highest value”.

“In Maharashtra, where veteran leaders like Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray saw the very people they nurtured and appointed as ministers turn traitor first. In Punjab, where the ruling party’s MPs were similarly poached and fractured. In West Bengal, where an entire block of MPs collapsed like a house of cards,” it said.

Mumbai, June 17: In a pre-emptive move against a brewing political rebellion, the Shiv Sena(UBT) leader in the Lok Sabha, Arvind Sawant, in a petition before the Speaker, Om Birla, has sought his intervention to block any attempts by disgruntled lawmakers to orchestrate a fresh split or merger in the Lower House of Parliament.

The extensive four-page letter, dated June 16, was written amid swirling media reports about “Operation Tiger”. The media report suggested that up to seven of the party’s nine Lok Sabha MPs are contemplating breaking away to align with the rival Eknath Shinde-led faction or other political forces.

Sawant has explicitly flagged these backroom manoeuvres. “There are reports appearing in the media that certain Members of Parliament elected on the symbol of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) have either approached, or are contemplating approaching, your office seeking recognition as a separate group or a merger with another political party within the Lok Sabha,” he said.

Sawant emphasised that the parliamentary wing owes its existence entirely to the parent organisational party and that the constitutional framework does not permit “multiple competing formations” to represent the same political party inside the House.

A core segment of Sawant’s petition relied heavily on constitutional law and judicial precedent to dismantle the strategy often used by defecting factions.

Sawant said there is no Constitutional protection for a ‘Split’, and that following the deletion of Paragraph 3 of the Tenth Schedule via the Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003, the law no longer recognises splinter groups within a legislature as a defence against disqualification.

Citing the Landmark Supreme Court judgment in ‘Subhash Desai vs. Principal Secretary, Governor of Maharashtra & Ors.’ (2023), he has argued that the power to appoint a whip, leader, or issue binding directives flows exclusively from the parent political party, not the legislative group.

Addressing rumours that numerical strength (the two-thirds mark) is enough to break away, Sawant clarified that Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule requires two distinct conditions to be satisfied conjunctively: first, a merger of the original political party itself, and second, the support of at least two-thirds of the legislative members. “Without an actual merger of the organisational Shiv Sena(UBT), any standalone action by the MPs would constitute a voluntary relinquishment of membership, triggering immediate disqualification under Paragraph 2 of the Anti-Defection Law,” he remarked.

Sawant has requested the Lok Sabha Speaker to take the formal representation strictly on record, refuse any separate recognition, status, privilege, or facility to any purported breakaway faction and ensure no decision is taken on any rogue request without first granting the principal Shiv Sena(UBT) leadership a fair opportunity to present its case.

The submission of this letter comes at a highly volatile moment. Rumours have intensified as multiple UBT MPs reportedly arrived in New Delhi simultaneously with Deputy Chief Minister and Shiv Sena chief Eknath Shinde.

Compounding the anxiety within the Uddhav camp, senior MP Sanjay Raut recently launched a scathing attack on the ruling dispensation, alleging that opposition lawmakers were being offered astronomical sums of up to Rs 15 crore each to defect.

While the Shinde faction has publicly dismissed accusations of engineering defections, the appearance of Sawant’s comprehensive legal letter signals that the Thackeray loyalists are bracing for a bruising constitutional battle to protect their presence in Parliament.

Mumbai: BMC launches special helpline to fill potholes in Mumbai With an aim to address citizens’ complaints promptly and effectively, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has implemented an integrated complaint management system ‘MyBMC MARG’ (Complaint Management and Redressal System) this year. Through this system, citizens will be able to register 114 different types of complaints related to the Municipal Corporation through a single application and they will also be able to follow up on them. Under this, the facility of registering complaints of potholes on roads on the ‘MyBMC MARG’ system has been provided to the citizens.

Potholes sometimes form on the roads during the monsoon season. In this context, the Municipal Corporation is constantly striving to take immediate notice of the complaints received from the citizens and take necessary corrective action. Digital media is being used to make the process of registering pothole complaints easy and efficient for the citizens. Last year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation had launched a separate mobile application ‘Pothole QuickFix’ for lodging complaints about potholes on roads. Through this application, citizens can lodge complaints with information, photos and location of potholes on roads. The initiative received a good response from the citizens. During this time, citizens had to use different systems for lodging complaints related to different departments of the municipal corporation. Keeping this in mind, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has launched a comprehensive system ‘MyBMC MARG’ from this year to provide more comprehensive and convenient services to the citizens. The mobile application ‘Pothole QuickFix’ has been integrated into this system. Accordingly, the facility to lodge a total of 114 types of complaints related to various departments of the municipal corporation including potholes, solid waste management, sewage issues, water supply, road maintenance, parks, public health, pest control, encroachments, lighting is available on ‘MyBMC MARG’.
The feature of the ‘MyBMC MARG’ system is that it is possible for citizens to register complaints from one platform, upload relevant images, check the current status of the complaint, track the action taken by the concerned department and get information about it after the complaint is resolved. Hence, the entire process from complaint registration to redressal has become more transparent and citizen-centric. This initiative by the Burhan Mumbai Municipal Corporation has made the complaint registration process easy, transparent and efficient and has provided a single comprehensive digital platform for citizens to follow up on their grievances. Especially when citizens register complaints of potholes on the roads, it becomes easier for the concerned department to take immediate action. This helps in expediting the pothole repair process. Android users can download the MyBMC MARG application on their smartphones using MyBMC MARG – Apps on Google Play and iPhone users can download the MyBMC MARG app – App Store. The people of Mumbai are appealing to the Municipal Corporation to register all complaints regarding potholes on the roads on the ‘MyBMC MARG’ system.