Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Saturday, two days before the Monsoon session of Parliament begins, accepted the merger of six Shiv Sena (UBT) MPs with the Shiv Sena legislature party led by Eknath Shinde in the House.With this, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena now has 13 MPs in the Lok Sabha, while the Uddhav Thackeray faction is reduced to just three.Birla also approved the request for separate seating for 20 dissident Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs. The MPs had earlier petitioned the Speaker seeking merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI). A decision on the merger request is still pending.Following today’s development, the BJP-led NDA’s strength in the 540-member Lok Sabha has gone up to 298. The two-thirds majority mark required to pass Constitution Amendment Bills is 360. If Birla approves the merger of the 20 dissident TMC MPs with NCPI, the NDA’s tally will rise further to 318.The government is aiming to pass the Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the upcoming session and is working to bridge the numbers gap.With 13 MPs, the Shiv Sena led by Eknath Shinde has now become the third-largest constituent of the NDA in the Lok Sabha, after BJP with 239 MPs and the TDP with 16 MPs. Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) is the fourth-largest NDA member with 12 MPs.