Six of the nine Lok Sabha members of Uddhav Thackeray’s faction of the Shiv Sena are believed to have written to Speaker Om Birla on Wednesday seeking a merger with the Eknath Shinde-led group of the party that is part of the NDA government in Maharashtra.

While there was no official confirmation either from the rebel MPs — who were in Delhi but remained incommunicado — or from the Speaker’s office, Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Raut said “Operation Tiger” may already have been set in motion. The reported bid to engineer a split in the Sena (UBT) has been dubbed Operation Tiger, a reference to party founder Bal Thackeray, who was popularly called Tiger.

If such a split happens, it would mirror the implosion of the Trinamool Congress, 20 of whose MPs have broken away from the party and applied to the Speaker for a merger with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India.

Sources said some of the rebel MPs met Speaker Birla at his residence on Wednesday morning and submitted a letter, purportedly signed by six parliamentarians, seeking a merger with Shinde’s faction of the Sena. However, the Speaker is learnt to have insisted on the physical presence of all the rebel MPs before taking cognisance of the request, as he had done in the case of the Trinamool rebels.

Raut and other Sena (UBT) leaders also met Birla, urging him not to recognise any breakaway faction without first giving the parent party an opportunity to present its case.

At a media conference in Delhi on Wednesday, Raut appeared to lose his bearings as he used expletives while referring to the Sena (UBT) rebels.

“These people are traitors and dishonesty is in their blood. We will not spare them. If anybody wants to leave the party, they should resign as MP first,” he said. “We are not going to shower flowers on the traitors,” Raut said, justifying the invectives. Only three of the party’s nine Lok Sabha members — Anil Desai, Arvind Sawant and Rajabhau Waze — were present alongside him.

Raut, a close confidant of party chief Uddhav, alleged that large sums of money were being offered to Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs to induce defections.“Maharashtra MPs are being bought for ₹50 crore each and ₹15 crore has already been distributed to ensure their presence in Delhi,” he claimed.

A functionary associated with the Shinde camp said: “A split is imminent, but we will not say anything until the due process is completed and the rebel MPs personally appear before the Speaker to verify their signatures.”

The sources indicated that the split could be formalised on June 19, the foundation day of the undivided Shiv Sena. The rebel MPs are expected to join Shinde at an event marking the occasion, bolstering his claim to being the true political heir of Sena founderBal Thackeray.

In a bid to stem the exodus, the Sena (UBT) has convened a meeting of its parliamentary party on Thursday and issued a three-line whip directing all MPs to attend.

Earlier, the party’s Lok Sabha leader, Arvind Sawant, had written to the Speaker, requesting him not to entertain any claim seeking recognition of a separate group or a merger with another political party.

The turnout at Thursday’s parliamentary party meeting in the old Parliament building is expected to provide aclearer picture of the extent of the rebellion. By issuing a whip, the Uddhav-led faction appeared to be laying the groundwork for seeking action, including possible disqualification proceedings, against MPs who stay away from the meeting.

The purported move to engineer a split in the Uddhav-helmed Sena group against the backdrop of the Trinamool rebellion is being widely viewed as part of the NDA’s broader effort to inch closer to the two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha, a threshold considered crucial for the passage of key measures, including legislation linked to delimitation and theimplementation of women’s reservation.

The Sena splintered in June 2022 when Shinde walked away with a majority of the party’s MLAs and aligned with the BJP to form the government in Maharashtra, becoming chief minister. The Election Commission subsequently recognised the Shinde faction as the official Shiv Sena, handing it control of the party name and symbol.