IANS

Mumbai, Sep 8: The Shiv Sena got a pre-election jolt Tuesday when three of its senior legislators joined the Congress.

Ahead of the assembly elections Oct 13, Manikrao Kokte from Nashik, Vinayak Nimhan from Pimpri-Chinchwad, near Pune, and Rajendra Raut of Barshi crossed over to the Congress.

Welcoming them into the Congress, senior party leader and Revenue Minister Narayan Rane said the party would be greatly strengthened by the trio joining it.

Congress ally Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) may find itself in a quandary with the developments since the assembly constituencies of the three new legislators joining Congress belong to its quota of seats.

Congress insiders claim that the party would now demand all the three assembly seats from the NCP to accommodate the new entrants.

Only a day earlier, Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray had said "outgoings" in the party had stopped and only "incomings" were on.

Thackeray's remarks came after the husband wife duo Sanjana and Sanjay Ghadi left the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) to join the Shiv Sena. While Sanjana was vice president, Sanjay was general secretary.

Apart from the Ghadi couple, the Shiv Sena has attracted other MNS activists like Prakash Mahajan, a senior office-bearer and brother of the slain Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Mahajan.

It has also successfully wooed prominent Marathi stars like Aadesh Bandekar, and former Indian Idol Abhijeet Sawant, now a well known actor-singer in Bollywood.