Eknath Khadse is all set to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) again after spending over three years in the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party. Though defections and splits have become routine today, such a defection three decades ago would have been a betrayal with serious repercussions. Chhagan Bhujbal and Narayan Rane faced serious threats from party workers when they quit Shiv Sena, and most MLAs who quit with them could not get re-elected.

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The leader is believed to be under a compulsion to make a comeback amid pending cases against him; his daughter-in-law and sitting BJP MP Raksha Khadse has also been renominated from the Raver constituency in Jalgaon.

Khadse resigned from the state cabinet led by Devendra Fadnavis in 2016. He was heading 12 departments when he resigned on the backdrop of the corruption charges in a Pune-based land deal as revenue minister. In political exile for nearly four years, Khadse was denied an Assembly ticket from the Muktainagar constituency. His daughter Rohini was fielded from the constituency only to be defeated by an independent. Khadse blamed Rohini’s defeat on non-cooperation from party leaders in the constituency. He joined the NCP in October 2020. In July 2022, he was elected to the legislative council for a six-year term.

“His joining the BJP was just a matter of time. Though it is being opposed by state leaders, it has been cleared by the central leadership of the party. Khadse and his family are standing at a crossroads and have no option but to come back to the fold,” said a party leader close to Khadse.

Rahul Narwekar (47)

Maharashtra Assembly speaker Rahul Narwekar was handpicked by the BJP leadership for the post in 2022 keeping his legal background in mind. The leadership knew that the Eknath Shinde-led government, formed by splitting the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, would face an unprecedented legal battle and the Speaker would play a key role. The opposition criticised Narwekar for being partisan as the adjudicator of the Sena versus Sena battle.

Narwekar began his political career as a Shiv Sena spokesperson, and joined the NCP in 2014. The South Mumbai boy born and brought in Colaba was fielded from the Maval Lok Sabha constituency by NCP, but stood third after Shiv Sena’s Shrirang Barne and Peasants and Workers Party’s Laxman Jagtap. He joined the NCP after the Sena failed to ensure a council seat for him.

Narwekar joined the BJP in 2019 ahead of the elections and was fielded as a party candidate from Colaba in South Mumbai. His brother, Makarand, and sister-in-law, Harshita, were corporators from adjoining wards in Colaba until the civic body was dissolved two years ago.

The second youngest Assembly speaker after Shivraj Patil (at the age of 42), Narwekar (47) was recently handpicked to head a committee constituted by Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla to recommend amendments in the Anti Defection Law.

“Like his skilful arguments on his verdict on the Sena and NCP split, he would effectively argue the party’s side on national televisions as their spokesperson for the parties he has been in,” said a BJP leader.

Abdul Sattar (59)

Three-term MLA from Sillod constituency in central Maharashtra, Abdul Sattar Abdul Nabi is one of the more controversial ministers in the incumbent Mahayuti government led by Eknath Shinde. After facing defeat by just 301 votes in 2004, the minister has been elected to the Assembly for the last three consecutive terms fighting against the BJP candidate. A leader from Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (formerly Aurangabad), where the Muslim electorate is dominant, he started off his political career as a gram panchayat member in 1984 and joined the Congress in 1999 as its Assembly candidate.

After spending 17 years in the party, Sattar resigned from the party protesting the party’s lack of cooperation in the local body polls. He continued to be a party MLA. The party expelled him in April 2019 after he took an anti-party stand for not getting nominated to the Lok Sabha elections. He announced his decision to join the BJP and met the then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, but the voters from his constituency and even local BJP leaders opposed the move. He then sided with Shiv Sena and joined the party in the presence of its chief Uddhav Thackeray in 2019. He was made minister of state for revenue, rural development and other departments in the Thackeray government until June 2022.

He was among the first batch of MLAs to jump the shift and join the Shinde camp during the split in the party. He was made agriculture minister by Shinde, only to divest from the portfolio a year later owing to the controversies and corruption charges. He was then made the minority affairs minister, a comparatively insignificant portfolio.

The MLA faces charges of corruption, land grabbing, and hiding assets in his election petition.

Chhagan Bhujbal (76)

In 1991, when a defection from Shiv Sena headed by Bal Thackeray was beyond imagination, Bhujbal left the Sena and joined the Congress. Until then he was from the first line of leaders of Shiv Sena since its inception in 1966. Bhujbal was elected mayor of Mumbai twice during his stint in Shiv Sena and was among the first few batches of party MLAs. He was first elected to the Maharashtra Assembly in 1985.

He sided with Sharad Pawar when the latter formed the Nationalist Congress Party in 1999 and was among the select lieutenants of the senior Maharashtra leader for the next 24 years. He was considered a close confidante of Pawar and his defection from the party in July last year surprised many. He was among the nine top NCP leaders who were sworn in as ministers in the Shinde government.

The OBC face, who is also known as a rebellious leader, likes to be in news and controversies, according to people close to him. Bhujbal was jailed in March 2016 in a money laundering and Maharashtra Sadan land scam case investigated by the anti-corruption bureau and enforcement directorate.

The OBC leader is expected to be the ruling alliance candidate from the Nashik LS constituency. It is however not clear whether he will be the candidate of his own party or represent big brother in the alliance, the BJP.

“The defection in those days would be seen as a betrayal with no excuse, especially when it is from Shiv Sena. Bhujbal had to go underground for some time. He could engineer it only because Sharad Pawar and the then CM Sudharkarrao Naik backed him,” political analyst Padmabhushan Deshpande said.

Narayan Rane (72)

Narayan Rane, former CM takes on his previous parties and its leaders soon after he quits it. Rane vehemently attacks Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, and his family members in almost every press conference he holds in Mumbai and Maharashtra. The former chief minister joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in October 2019 after dissolving his own party Maharashtra Swabhimani Paksha in September 2017.

Rane, who was chief minister of Maharashtra for over eight months in 1999, had his best political career in Shiv Sena, where he rose to the top post in state politics after a humble beginning as shakha pramukh in Chembur in 1984. He worked in the Income Tax Department for over 13 years before that. He also held the post of a councillor in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation between 1985 and 1991 and was elected to the Legislative Assembly for consecutive terms between 1990 and 2014.

As Uddhav Thackeray rose as party leader, the differences between Rane and him started intensifying. Rane eventually quit the party in 2005.

After his negotiations with Sharad Pawar failed, Rane chose to join the Congress and was made revenue minister. His aspiration to become CM again was no secret, and later he would say publicly that he was promised the post by the Congress when he joined the party.

However, the party leadership chose Ashok Chavan over him when it came to replacing the incumbent CM Vilasrao Deshmukh in 2008 in the wake of the terror attack in Mumbai in November of that year. When Ashok Chavan quit as the CM in November 2010, the party leadership chose Prithviraj Chavan for the post. Finally, Rane quit in September 2017. He then floated his own outfit which he merged with the BJP.