Leaked photographs detailing the clandestine execution of “Operation Tiger” have officially surfaced, exposing the minute-by-minute orchestration behind the defection of six Lok Sabha members from the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) faction to the ruling Eknath Shinde camp.
The coordinated political defection, which unfolded quietly across Maharashtra before hitting Delhi on June 17, 2026, has dealt a severe structural blow to Team Uddhav. Newly leaked images now document the exact moments the rebel lawmakers met secretly with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to formally break away while circumventing India’s strict anti-defection laws.
The Early Morning Timeline of the Defection
The crossover was executed with high-level precision in the early hours of June 17, utilizing separate travel routes and luxury hotels to evade political intelligence tracking from the opposition.
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06:30 AM — The First Strike: Rebel Member of Parliament Omraje Nimbalkar arrived quietly at Speaker Om Birla’s official residence in Delhi. He signed his formal defection paperwork and immediately departed back to Maharashtra to avoid detection.
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07:30 AM — The Rendezvous: The remaining five breakaway lawmakers—Sanjay Dina Patil, Sanjay Jadhav, Sanjay Deshmukh, Nagesh Patil Ashtikar, and Bhausaheb Wakchaure—checked into The Leela Hotel in Delhi. Simultaneously, Eknath Shinde’s son, MP Shrikant Shinde, and Maharashtra Minister Pratap Sarnaik arrived at the same hotel using completely different transit routes.
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09:30 AM — The Formal Split: The entire group drove from the hotel to the Speaker’s residence. The remaining five MPs officially signed their separation documents and posed for a celebratory photograph in Om Birla’s residential garden.
Evading the Anti-Defection Law
In the formal petition submitted to the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the rebel lawmakers requested separate legislative recognition, asserting that they possessed the necessary two-thirds majority of the party’s parliamentary wing required to avoid disqualification under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
The group justified their sudden exit by claiming that Uddhav Thackeray was covertly finalizing an institutional merger of the remainder of his faction into the Indian National Congress. The lawmakers argued that a complete merger with Congress was fundamentally unacceptable to their grassroots voter base and strayed from the core Hindutva ideology laid down by party founder Balasaheb Thackeray.
Shinde Celebrates the ‘Sixer’
Following the public confirmation of the split, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde formally declared that the long-running crossover plan, codenamed Operation Tiger, was officially complete and successful. Shinde welcomed the defectors back into what he labeled the “real Shiv Sena family,” praising them as grounded leaders heavily connected to the public.
Reflecting on his original political rebellion, Shinde noted that exactly four years prior, on June 22, 2022, they had initiated their initial uprising with 40 state MLAs. He stated that by pulling off this latest parliamentary shift, the faction had hit a perfect sixer to secure total control over the party’s identity.
