Defectors command highest value: Shiv Sena(UBT) slams turncoats in ‘Saamana’

Mumbai, June 17, 2026

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.(Agency)